Obama's First Year: The World As It Is

It's been busy since the trip to Rome, and there has been snow, which has kept me off the bike and is making me cranky. But I did do an-op ed for the holiday editions of the GPD newspapers over the weekend, and I just saw that one paper has picked it up already. It's an evaluation of Obama's first year in office and addresses the criticisms from the right and left by arguing that given the challenges a year ago, he's done pretty well. Pretty well would already apply if all he had done was avoid big blunders or disasters, but I argue the president has done better. Perhaps more important, through his thoughtful, deliberate approach to the challenges he has faced, we can have some confidence that things will continue to be handled in a serious and pragmatic manner. This is quite a bit to hope for (in case you're disappointed now). Without the necessary votes in Congress, or a certain convergence of your plans with the interests of powerful, independently acting nations such as Russia and China (or Brazil, or India), not much is going to get done. So stop the timidity talk. It's called pragmatism, and it's a requirement for an American president like rarely before. Anyway, read all about it (in Dutch). I actually managed to bring cycling into the piece, by quoting my old cycling mentor and former legitimate amateur racer, Thijs, who casually used to say: "yes, go try do it" whenever you'd criticize the performance of one or other cyclist on tv.