"Instead of hope and change, the Obama presidency has delivered decline and despair on a scale not seen in America since the dying days of the Carter administration."
"It will require another epic Reagan-style revolution to turn this great nation around and get it off its knees."
We don't need Nile Gardiner (The Telegraph/UK) to tell us how bad things are, but he does anyway. It's interesting to us only because it's something of an outsider's perspective, our own media being too corrupt to see our situation with any clarity.
And maybe this is news to Gardiner's particular readership?
More than two-thirds of American voters say the United States is in decline.... 83 percent are very or somewhat worried about the future of the nation; 49 percent, “very worried” (The Hill). A plurality in other countries believe that China - not the U.S. - is the world's leading superpower (Pew Global Attitudes). 90 percent of Americans believe recognize that our economy "stinks" (CNN).
.... With 14 million Americans out of work, millions of families struggling to pay the mortgage, the prospect of a double dip recession on the horizon and the biggest budget deficit since the Second World War, it is not hard to see why fewer than one in five Americans believe the US is heading in the “right track” in the latest RealClear Politics poll of polls....
.... Even The New York Times has acknowledged "soaring poverty" in Obama's America, citing a Census Bureau report showing the number of Americans officially living below the poverty line (46.2 million) at its highest level for more than half a century, since 1959.
And thus:
Placed in historical context, Obama is without doubt one of the most unpopular American presidents in post-war history at this stage of his time in office. Levels of public disillusionment with the federal government have never been higher, and almost everything the current White House touches ends in failure.
It will require another epic Reagan-style revolution to turn this great nation around and get it off its knees. Fortunately, what China lacks, the United States still has in abundance – the spirit of individual freedom, the love of liberty, a sense of justice and fair play, freedom of speech and worship, and an instinctive desire to act as a powerful force for good on the world stage.
America must continue to lead the world, for the alternative is too grim to contemplate.
In truth, America cannot lead "the world," not if it's to include these newly Islamist nations now congealing out of the revolutions of the "Arab spring." But we could yet lead the "free world" again, what remains of Western civlization, and it is encouraging to me that someone from across the pond is cheering us on... more or less.