President Obama - Copenhagen Summit Failure

President Obama has bowed to foreign leaders, which diminishes the office of the Presidency and the prestige of the United States. Obama needs to be loved and foreign leaders may in fact love him; the problem is that Presidents need to be respected and feared rather than loved to properly conduct American foreign policy. Obama may have learned this lesson the hard way at the Global Climate Summit in Copenhagen. President Obama repeatedly asked for a one on one meeting with Chinese Premier Wen, the leader of China; but instead the Chinese sent lower level emissaries to meet with Obama. He who has the gold makes the rules and the Chinese clearly have the gold so they just ignored Obama's request to meet with Wen. If Obama was respected and feared, this occurrence would have been unimaginable.

Finally, since no meeting with Wen was in the making, President Obama just went looking for the meeting he thought he was having with Wen. Meanwhile, a negotiating team known as BASIC gathered. The modified acronym reflected it members: Brazil, South Africa, India and China. After some confusion about who had access to the meeting room, White House aides told the President that Wen was inside with the leaders of the other three countries. To the astonishment of all, Obama crashed the meeting. I guess Obama thought he was back in Chicago at a community organizing meeting. Seeing Premier Wen, Obama called out, "Mr. Premier are you ready to see me, essentially begging for a meeting? Inside he found startled leaders and no chair to sit down. An aide to President Lula of Brazil left his chair to allow Obama to sit down. It was an awkward diplomatic moment to say the least.

Obama then attempted to strong arm a definitive deal on carbon emissions with these leaders, which did not occur. Thankfully, the Global Climate Summit in Copenhagen was a circus where little was accomplished. Rich nations vowed to provide $30 billion in emergency climate aid to poor countries and set a goal of eventually channeling $100 billion to them by 2020. Of course, Obama has no authority to dole out these monies without an act of Congress so this may amount to bupkiss. And, there was some general discussions about controlling carbon emissions; but no particular treaty was established to guarantee that it happens.

In other words, 192 countries came together in their private jets that emitted tons of carbon emissions to get to this Summit and the result was just a lot of hot air. The good news is that the President's failure is good for the United States. Had something meaningful happened in Copenhagen, millions of jobs would have been lost in the United States and all Americans would have paid significantly higher energy cost. In this case, the fact that President Obama failed once again on the world stage, is the best thing that could have happened. The only problem is that Presidents that are loved rather than respected and feared often cause other countries to miscalculate, (i.e. Iran, North Korea, Russia), which can be very dangerous. That part of the story is not so good.

President Obama is a young, inexperienced and very naive Democrat Socialist that apparently never took International Relations 325 at University. Had Obama done so and also learned the lessons of history, the President might be more effective on the world stage and less dangerous to our nation. Obama is failed President, Jimmy Carter II, all over again, which is a frightening thought. We need to take back our country in 2010 and 2012 by electing Conservatives, who have worked in the real world not acadamia. We can do it. We are going to do it.