Well, If Tom Friedman Thinks So, Who Am I To Disagree?

Yet, to concentrate on these things is to miss the most important argument of the speech which was that Obama’s mere presence as president would solve most of the problems of American foreign policy. Obama argued that as president he’d be able to counter “the terrorists’ message of hate with an agenda for hope around the world.” It is tempting to dismiss this as sheer hubris. But Obama is not alone in making this case. Just last week the New York Times’ foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman, one of the most influential journalists in America, wrote that Obama’s main selling point was that he could repair America’s relationship with the world. ~James Forsyth

Set aside for the moment that Obama is always talking about hope.  The line about countering hate with hope could have been taken from one of Mr. Bush’s speeches.  Knowing Obama’s penchant for “borrowing” other politicians’ lines, it probably was taken from one of Mr. Bush’s speeches.  It is no less vapid when someone fluent in the English language says it.

I don’t know which is more troubling: that a man might become President because he can recycle boilerplate optimism and cultivates a weird cult of personality, or that it can reasonably be said that Tom Friedman is one of the most influential journalists in the country.