I've been busy studying for the bar and so this is my first post for a while. I saw this interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN while checking baseball scores. It's vintage Zakaria: thoughtful, fair and internationally orientated. It helps, I admit, that I agree with him. Electing Obama to the Presidency would help the US's image abroad, but that this boost will fade fast if Obama follows through on the anti-market rhetoric that he's used on the campaign trail. In a nutshell:
"Most people around the world want the United States to keep this open-world economy going, and they care much more about that than whether the United States is multilateral in the United Nations Human Rights Convention.
The core issue for a Kenyan farmer, for a Brazilian businessman, for an Indian entrepreneur is, will the United States help keep markets open?"
It’s a very brief piece but well worth reading. Now back to the books!
2 comments:
um, yeah, so there was supposed to be a link and the quotation was supposed to be in italics. I obviously have no idea what's going on.
Fixed your italics, link good buddy. I agree, this tension is real and fascinating. I wonder if the Democrats or Obama specifically can manage the finesse of any jump out of "end free trade" into "let's be smarter about the changing world."
I get the sense sometimes that Obama tries to introduce this into how he talks about policy... but I also imagine with so much support from unions, etc. he can only go so far AND I would also guess we're unlikely to see him push hard against how far he can take that... but I'd love to be pleasantly surprised on that point.
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