Robert Hargrove

The furor in America around President Obama winning the Nobel Prize was really maddening and saddening. Instead of cheering for our leaders to elicit their greatness, many American’s tend to foolishly diminish them. Rush Limbaugh said when President Obama got elected, “I hope he fails.”

My view is that right or wrong, he is the President and that those who do the tearing down seldom do the building up. How does Limbaugh justify his $200 million a year contract as a professional provocateur? It seems less a statement of Mr. Limbaugh’s good judgment and more a statement that many Americans seem to feel the need for someone to package their hatred and evoke the negative ions already swirling in their brains and blood.

It’s very hard to understand how conservative talk show hosts, like Laura Ingram, not only decry the President winning the Nobel on the one hand, but also cheer when the city of Chicago fails in its bid to hold the Olympics on the other. Am I missing something here?

I wasn’t an early fan of President Obama, but with time, I have become one, especially with his Smart Power foreign policy initiatives. How wonderful it was to hear the President addressing the graduating class of the Naval Academy saying that when you land on a foreign shore, you are not only there to express American military power, but to embody the values in our constitution – liberty, equality and enduring hope.

More…

• How inspiring it was to hear the President addressing the Muslim world from Cairo saying we respect you and your contribution to civilization vs. rail on about seeing the Muslim world as the womb of the evils of terrorism.

• How intriguing it was to see Obama extending an “outstretched hand to the Iranians” vs. the “closed fist” that was extended in the Bush administration.

• How fascinating it was to see Obama shake hands with one of our greatest detractors in South American, Hugo Chavez.

These small events may be more symbolic than substantive, but they do represent a shift in the wind in the way America sees its leadership role in the world, from big-stick unilateralism to speaking more softly and winning the hearts and minds of those who we previously spoke to as enemies, and who in turn often acted as such.