American and British dailies have described president Barack Obama’s first trip abroad as Head of State as a bag of mixed results, but all in all, not bad for a leader travelling abroad as the head of state for the first time.
According to them, Obama presented himself as the leader of an America that can no longer go it alone.
“It was a performance that ranged from mediating behind closed doors — to a carefully calculated news conference in which he reached deep into history, showed contrition for the failings of Wall Street, and forecast a road the world could no longer travel. Gone are the days, from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana, when Britain and the United States made the rules that others followed,” reports the New York Times.
“All in all, not a bad day’s work,” said Eswar S Prasad, a former China division chief at the International Monetary Fund.
In a premiere diplomatic tour that has already been scrutinized for every blemish, Obama got some not-so-good reviews.
Several European news outlets complained that he seemed aloof, while others raved about his performance.
Papers said Obama took pains to project a cheerful, humble image to a world still alternately enraged and befuddled by a financial crisis that originated with American sub-prime loans.
In a rare show of emotion from the international press, many in the room stood up and cheered after Obama was done.
The Washington Post, on the other hand, said that though Obama may have overstated things a bit, the summit did manage to boost the confidence of financial markets.
It acknowledged the fact that the second G-20 Summit has implicitly agreed that a rewriting of the rules for global capitalism is a must if progress out of a crisis is to be made.
It praises the fact that countries took a firm decision to better coordinate regulation of global institutions and capital flows, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years back.
“The push for broader, tighter cross-border financial regulation, in fact, came largely in response to the light-touch approach of the Bush administration. But whatever transatlantic tension once existed over that issue pretty much melted away last week,” the paper says.
In the end, Thursday's communique, with its promise of a global regulatory crackdown, was an easy win for all concerned.
All in all, a pretty successful opening-night performance for president Obama on the international economic stage, it concludes in its report.
