What we're seeing on the world stage is the reality that this effete man-child had no business getting anywhere near the White House. He was buoyed all the way into the Oval Office by a media operation of epic proportions. What were his qualifications? 20 minutes in the US Senate? A previous stint in the Illinois state legislature highlighted by a string of "Present" votes? A successful career in business and industry? Ha! Good one!
Seriously, this guy was never anything more than a street hustler and shakedown artist who had mastered a certain demeanor that made East Coast elites swoon and feel just so darn good about themselves for heaping praise on that well spoken colored man.
Now, thrust into the actual responsibilities of the position and expected to meet with foreign actual leaders as peers, we're seeing just how out of his depth he is. I can scarcely imagine what other leaders like Putin must think about him, I would imagine at first they were so incredulous at his ineptness that maybe they thought they were being played by some sort of elaborate long con. That phony intellectual speaking cadence, with the "uhhs" and "umms" (that we are supposed to consider the hallmarks of one sorting through complex, multilayered arguments in real time) might have been enough to earn him 8+ years of domestic media fellatio, but people like the Russians and Chinese see through it as the laughable farce that it is.
As usual when it comes to his reception by foreign powers, I am of split feelings. On the one hand I enjoy seeing open disdain for him by people who have no obligation to participate in the halo of adulatory bullsh*t that surrounds his ego, but on the other hand I wince at seeing the office and the country itself getting no respect. But I guess a country that would elect him -- twice -- doesn't deserve any.
