'I Was Wrong to Have Supported Barack Obama'

Conventional wisdom holds President Obama to be fairly popular overseas--particularly in Europe. But one former supporter, at least, is having second thoughts. Daniel Hannan, a Conservative member of the European Parliament for South East England, has turned his defection into an op-ed in the Telegraph. "I admit it," he declares: "I was wrong to have supported Barack Obama."

His reason is simple. While Obama is "not ... without his good points," among them a "commitment to school choice" and his "cheaper" foreign policy, ultimately he has still presided over an expansion of the federal government that brings the U.S. closer to Europe--and Hannan, in a pair of paragraphs to give a sense of validation to American conservatives everywhere, isn't pleased:

It was he who chose, in defiance of public opinion, to establish a state-run healthcare system. It was he who presumed to tell private sector employees what they could earn, he who adopted the asinine cap-and-trade rules, and he who re-federalised social security, thereby reversing the single most beneficial reform of the Clinton years.

These errors are not random. They amount to a comprehensive strategy of Europeanisation: Euro-carbon taxes, Euro-disarmament, Euro-healthcare, Euro-welfare, Euro-spending levels, Euro-tax levels and, inevitably, Euro-unemployment levels. Any American reader who wants to know where Obamification will lead should spend a week with me in the European Parliament. I'm working in your future and, believe me, you won't like it.

Hannan also takes exception to Obama's "disdain for the United Kingdom" and alienation of other allies. "No one denies that Obama was dealt a rotten economic hand; but he has played it ineptly," he concludes. "His policies are serving to make his country poorer, less free and less respected. And that is a problem for all of us."