- Rebranding on the International Scene The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman says the passage of the health care bill will "undermine the Michael Moore vision of America as a country where big business ruthlessly exploits the downtrodden poor. This is a cartoon version of the US that is wildly popular in Europe and around the world." He also thinks the victory will change the view of Obama as "weak, indecisive and ineffective." World leaders "will now have to consider the possibility that the president’s persistence might ultimately deliver success."
- May Help With Israel in Particular, say Politico's Laura Rozen and Ben Smith, arguing that how Obama is viewed will change most in "a place obsessed with American politics."
- Hogwash:
This Won't Do Much at All "Journalists and commentators find it easy
to rely on an essentially narrative style of analysis," gripes Harvard
professor Steven Walt
at Foreign Policy. But the "larger structural forces that are shaping
events and constraining choices" haven't changed here. The only way in
which he thinks the health care victory might have any effect at all on
the international side is in freeing Obama from needing to "coddle
quite as many congressmen on foreign-policy issues."
- Well, Lends Credence to Idea of 'Long Game' in Middle East, suggests Walt's fellow Foreign Policy blogger Marc Lynch,
who says that, "for most of the past year," he's been unsure whether
Obama's "just making things up as he goes" with regard to the Middle
East, or "keeping his eye on the long-term objective while others get
lost in the tactics and the public theatrics." The perseverance and
eventual victory in the messy health care battle "give at least some
support for the optimistic reading that on the big picture, Obama may
actually know what he's doing."
- Fewer Distractions Now Says Brookings's Shadi Hamid, writing at The Huffington Post: "To the extent Arab leaders have outmaneuvered Obama, it is, in part, due to two interrelated factors: they believe Obama has been distracted, and, secondly, Obama has actually been distracted."
- Some Respect "The one thing health care passage might do for Obama," says Tufts's Daniel Drezner, blogging for Foreign Policy, "is add a dollop of respect for Obama's political acumen among other world leaders."
- Four Things Obama Gains From Health Care The win could give Obama "an international boost...momentum...space and oxygen," given the president's previously health-care loaded agenda, says Heather Hurlbut, a former Clintonite. Also: "ambition." She explains: "just the progress to this point threw Obama's approval rating back over 50%."
- Five Things World Leaders Learn from Health Care Global Dashboard lists them: (1) "that is becoming increasingly hard for the American political system to make major decisions"; (2) "countries are heavily exposed to the US’s bitterly partisan politics"; (3) "much of the healthcare debate were being driven by forces inaccessible to the mainstream media or to elite opinion"; (4) "change on most important issues is going to be increasingly hard and time-consuming to achieve"; and (5) leaders will get "an interesting model of the compromises needed to deliver radical change"
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Heather Horn



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