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Telegraph - President Barack Obama would be bad for Britain, by Irwin Stelzer

As British and most other foreign observers see it, Barack Obama is the second coming. Perhaps not of you-know-who, although in his victory speech Obama did describe his triumph in the primaries as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”.

Moses made the waters recede, but he had help. So Obama must be the second coming of JFK. Never mind that Kennedy sent troops to Vietnam, backed an abortive invasion of Cuba, and conveyed such a sense of inexperience and weakness at his summit with Kruschev that we almost stumbled into a nuclear war when the Russian leader decided he could get away with putting some missiles in Cuba.

Like Kennedy, Obama is handsome, thin, stylish. Better still, he’s black, and so eloquent that he persuaded “racist” America, or at least its Democrats, to have him lead the party in its quest to recapture the most powerful office in the world.

Many Brits can’t wait for his first visit, and the French are agog at the prospect of Michelle (sounds French, doesn’t it?) Obama strolling arm in arm with their very own Carla, both clad in the latest French frocks.

Small problem. Obama is a dyed-in-the-silk protectionist, who would never allow his wife to be seen in anything not made in the good-old-US-of-A. He wants to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), and if Canada and Mexico refuse the terms he will offer, threatens to cancel the entire trade-opening deal.

He has pledged to turn down new trade deals, on the general theory that free trade has cost America jobs, and, more important, antagonised his trade union patrons.

There’s worse. Obama is eager to shed America’s role as keeper of world order. Troops are to be brought back from Iraq regardless of what generals tell him, a position far more extreme than Gordon Brown’s. …

Nor can Europeans be happy with Obama’s promise to meet with the world’s bad guys, no pre-conditions required. He is apparently unaware that his willingness to meet the leaders of North Korea and Iran (Castro the younger is also on his list, but fear of a backlash among Florida’s Cuban expatriate community has muted this plan) undermines the multilateral efforts of the groups that are dealing with those regimes.

It’s all so hilarious.

Unfortunately for our European friends, the American ballot does not allow the selection of one president for domestic policy, and one for foreign. So you will have to be content with our choice. My guess is that those who follow the US elections on the BBC will watch an articulate Obama battering the sincere but bumbling McCain.

Every attack on Obama will be dismissed as racist, every stumble by McCain attributed to his age and every Obama flirtation with protectionism dismissed as “he doesn’t really mean it”. Any McCain comments on Iran’s nuclear ambitions will be reported as a threat to “take out” those facilities.

Should Americans decide that foreign policy concerns trump economic policy concerns, age and experience trump youth and untested promise, and should Cindy McCain rather than Michelle Obama get to choose the new curtains in the White House, those who depend on the BBC for their news will be as surprised as they were in January 2001 when George W. Bush was sworn in. And throughout Europe charges of racism will re-emerge. You can count on it.