The Rest of the World

Byron York writes at National Review Online:

I have a friend in London, very Euro in outlook, who is terrifically frustrated and worried about the election.

His chief concern: the role of Americans. “It’s a pity that Americans are the ones who elect the president,” he says. “It would be much better if the people of the world voted on the American president.”

Hmmm . . . how about a deal? The people of the world vote on the American president, and Americans vote for the head of every other country on earth. That way, we could get decent leaders around the world (though we’d have to do this quickly, before the American electorate becomes any more infantile, to ensure that) who could apply pressure on the dimwit the world would undoubtedly elect to head the USA. That dimwit would undoubtedly have argued all along that we need to “listen to the rest of the world,” but would he hold to that if the rest of the world were conservative?

I hate this “listen to the rest of the world” crap. Most of the world is a sewer either materially, morally, or both. When lefties say “listen to the rest of the world,” they mean listen to lefties around the world.

UPDATE (7/25/08):   Just heard in my podcast of today’s Dennis Prager show that, in contrast to the 200,000 or so that showed up to listen to Barack Obama in Germany yesterday (and we’ll see if that 200k estimate holds up), when Ronald Reagan spoke in Germany, 100,000 Germans attended to protest.  I’m with Prager that if given a choice between a candidate that attracts German fans and a candidate that attracts German protestors, my candidate is the latter.