OPINION:
President Obama deserves credit for consistency. At home or abroad, he never misses an opportunity to cite failings and weaknesses of the country that twice elected him president. He was at it again Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly, where envy of the West is never sated.
Mr. Obama talked the high-minded talk that warms the hearts of do-gooders who are out to do well, and used the occasion to get in a little campaigning for Hillary Clinton, on whom he is counting to preserve whatever turns out to be his legacy. Without speaking the name of Donald Trump, he rebuked the Republican nominee’s views on trade (some of which Hillary shares), immigration and multiculturalism, and even rebuked some views that the Donald is not necessarily known to hold.
He drew a dark picture of the future if the forces of “aggressive nationalism” and “crude populism” take hold in the world, and lest anyone in the hall think he was rebuking any of the nations represented there, he warned against building walls. “A nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself,” he cried, a clear indictment of Mr. Trump’s promise to build a wall on America’s border with Mexico to stem the waves of prospective Latin American immigrants that have threatened to overwhelm America’s ability to accommodate them.
The man who was elected eight years ago on eloquent promises of hope and change — it was a mantra accepted by millions as if his merely saying so made it reality — sounded almost plaintive, as if apologizing for failure to redeem the promise.
“Time and again human beings have believed they finally arrived at a period of enlightenment, only to repeat cycles of conflict and suffering. Perhaps that’s our fate.”
He urged the leaders before him to appeal to their better angels, as Abraham Lincoln called them.
“We have to remember the choices of individual human beings led to repeated world war. Each of us as leaders, each nation can choose to reject those who appeal to our worst impulses and embrace those who appeal to our best.”
Then it was back to the hustings. “I believe at this moment we all face a choice,” he said. “We can choose to press forward with a better model of cooperation and integration or we can retreat into a world sharply divided and ultimately in conflict along age-old lines of nation and tribe and race and religion.”
He eagerly laid out times and places where he said America had fallen short of practicing democracy, as if many in the audience knew what “democracy” is actually about. He said the rest of the world would be “wise” to follow his example of eradicating corruption and unfair taxes. He urged thinking globally, and cited his sweetheart agreement with Iran, meant to curtail its program to build a nuclear weapon with which it hopes to dominate the Middle East, and renewal of American diplomatic ties with Fidel Castro’s Cuba as examples of a “successful global approach.”
High-minded or not, it was warmed-over stuff, like music that is better than it sounds, including the warm words for Hillary and the vinegar for the Donald. Noisy but harmless.
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