THE TELEGRAPH: Barack Obama's inability to articulate his plans has generated the sense of a presidency on the verge of failure, writes Alex Spillius.
Buried deep in yet another poll this week cataloguing Barack Obama's declining popularity in his home country was an intriguing nugget of opinion.
Democracy Corps, a Left-leaning research firm, found that 55 per cent of Americans think the world "socialist" fittingly describes their president.
By most received definitions, this is absurd. If socialism is a belief that the means of production and distribution should be owned collectively or by central government, then Obama is no more a socialist than Ronald Reagan ever was.
The reason for this apparent aberration may be that interpretations of the term in the US are much broader than in Europe, where there is some experience of socialism. For some Americans, it means anyone who believes in increased state spending.
But if Obama isn't a socialist, what is he? It is strange to report, but after 19 months of living under his presidency, Americans are still not sure. It is a big part of his problem. >>> Alex Spillius - American Way | Saturday, July 17, 2010
