The Alien in the White House

"We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign ... " wrote Mark Twain.

"We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign — foreign from top to bottom — foreign from centre to circumference — foreign inside and outside and all around — nothing any where about it to dilute its foreignness — nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! ... we have found it." Was Mark Twain prophesying the American Electorate of 2008, and its choice of Barack Obama as President, when he wrote "The Innocents Abroad?"

Why was one of Barack Obama's first reforms in the White House to get rid of Winston Churchill? The bust of Winston Churchill was a gift to the American people from Tony Blair. Barack Obama mysteriously sent it packing - back off to the Britain from when it came. It would seem that Barack Obama would have found kinship with the British leader who was half American on his mother's side, as was Obama also. The Winston Churchill of history admired America and shared America's values. To Barack Obama, Winston Churchill's American-British heritage was alien, and he banished the great leader from the American people's house with no second thoughts raised in his conscience.

The American people elected an Alien to serve as the leader of their nation. Obama lives in the White House but his focus is not upon the nation that elected him. Instead, he views himself as a leader of the world community from which he originates, not America, where he ended up. Perhaps Americans will learn a lesson - always elect a Homeboy (or Home Gal) as your leader. Elect someone who grew up amongst you and understands your distinct American values, not a mysterious figure who suddenly appears on the scene proclaiming himself to be "The First African-American" this and that. I thought Bill Clinton had already been awarded title to being the First African-American President anyway, by African-Americans themselves.

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe. The Alien in the White House by Dorothy Rabinowitz