Including, needless to say, his domestic and foreign policy as President. Now, to demonstrate that this isn’t a gratuitous swipe at Bill, I will note that the compulsion to be liked is at the root of nearly every US leftist. What is the ultimate litmus test of America’s worth? Their perception of how much other nations (by which they mean their “elite”) like us. Kerry’s “Global Test,” Obama’s “we can’t expect other countries to say okay.”

Ultimately this is a childish delusion built upon insecurity. The European intelligentsia has never liked America, going back to before the founding. They never shall, even if we remake ourselves in their image, for then they’ll contemptuously dismiss us as upstarts, the same way the French sneer at the silly Quebecois and their feeble attempts to be French themselves. What is at the heart of the left’s yearning for an international pat on the head is a desire to be accepted by the supposedly more sophisticated and nuanced. They believe that if we elect candidate that they themselves like, then everyone else will like us just as much as they wish they liked themselves.

Meanwhile, those Americans such as myself who reject the European model, and who delight in the knowledge that the US was created to be the anti-Europe, by those who wanted nothing more to do with the Old Country, will be held up as examples of all that is wrong with this country. I think I can live with that reality much more comfortably than the leftists can live with theirs, for in my own simple way I am content and they will never be.