Barack Obama Was the Biggest Loser of 2010-The View From Germany

Gee, I thought Europe loved President Obama. The summer before the election Obama took a European tour where the heads of State fawned over the future President. The future President promised that was that he was going to "repair" our relationship with Europe "damaged" after eight years of that "cowboy" George "W" Bush.

In Germany, tens of thousands of Germans turned out to listen to candidate Obama speak in front of Adolf Hitler's favorite monument, the Victory Column. And his campaign assured us the Rock concert that preceded his speech had nothing to do with the speech, in Germany Barack Obama was as big a star as David Hasselhoff.

Apparently David Hasselhoff has nothing to worry about.  In today's Der Spiegel online they asked German Pundits to comment on Obama's START Treaty victory in the Senate, while they gave the  POTUS a tiny pat on the back, at least two of the major media sources in Germany used it as an opportunity to bash the Obama Presidency.

SPIEGEL's Washington correspondent Marc Hujer writes on SPIEGEL ONLINE:

"Barack Obama was the biggest loser of 2010. He allowed the angry Tea Party movement to grow powerful, he did not pass any decent laws despite his majority in Congress and he was aloof, elitist and indecisive. He had to accept a formidable, yet entirely understandable, defeat in the midterm elections as a result. No one expected much from Obama, at least not during the rest of this year."
"Now, just days before Christmas, Congress has ratified the New START disarmament treaty with Russia.

… Will Obama build on this victory? Is it Obama's breakthrough as a president? Will it mark his comeback as a reformer? … Is a new era of cooperation beginning?"

"The opposite is much more probable, namely that the disarmament treaty will be Obama's last significant achievement for a long time. In January, the new Congress will convene. The new representatives who won in the midterm elections will come to Washington, including those Tea Party activists who have little interest in making compromises with Obama. With them, Congress will move to the right …. Possibly the only reason why so many Republicans voted for Obama's law was because they themselves fear the new era and see few chances of passing sensible, bipartisan laws in the new Congress."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes: "The ratification of the New START treaty is extremely
 important. The treaty guarantees that the number of nuclear weapons continues to fall, by an equal number on both sides, so that a dangerous imbalance does not arise. … It also refutes the accusation that the nuclear powers always demand that non-nuclear states do without atomic weapons, without disarming themselves. Even with the treaty, the idea of a world free of nuclear weapons remains just a hope. But a small step is better than nothing."

"Barack Obama, who negotiated the treaty with Moscow, is justified in celebrating a major personal victory. Despite his serious defeat in the midterm elections, the US president invested a lot of political capital in order to get the treaty through the Senate. US voters are unlikely to thank him for it -- they have other worries. But they should, at least for one day, feel a little proud of their president."