Europeans know a thing or two about down-to-the-wire debt deals, but with time running out in Washington to reach an agreement before a catastrophic default that could have devastating spillover effects around the globe, European leaders are sweating.  On Tuesday, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and former finance minister of France, warned the United States that the issue needed to be "resolved immediately."  Today, she told the PBS NewsHour that there would be dire consequences for the world economy if there wasn't resolution.

There's quite a lot of concern out there. The global economy is clearly highly dependent on the U.S. economy, because the U.S. economy is the first in the world and it's a major power in many respects. So to have the lead economy uncertain about its debt ceiling is quite worrisome.

In a separate interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, she said the solution would be to raise the debt ceiling now and address fiscal consolidation issues in the medium term.

Today, the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble also warned Washington to act.

Everyone in the US should be aware of their responsibility for the global financial markets.

He added, "The core of [the U.S.'s] difficulties is exorbitant debt and the economic prospects. Americans have to find long-term solutions to create solid fiscal and growth policies."

Schäuble and Lagarde were downright tame compared to Vince Cable, Britain's secretary of state for business, who told the BBC earlier this week that "the biggest threat to the world financial system comes from a few rightwing nutters in the American Congress rather than the euro zone."

Perhaps, the most sobering analysis of all comes from Germany's Der Spiegel:

Even if the worst is avoided, US finances are still a mess. Total debt is approaching 100 percent of gross domestic product, putting it in the same league as Italy, Portugal and Ireland, three of the euro-zone's famous PIIGS states. America's budget deficit is well over a trillion dollars -- more than 10 percent of GDP. Were Washington to apply to become a member of the European common currency zone, it would be rejected out of hand.

We'd be rejected by the euro zone? This euro zone?

A new gallup poll released today shows that despite recent remarks by President Obama that the 1967 borders should be the starting point in peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians -- a position that angered pro-Israel hawks -- most American Jews still approve of the president. His approval rating among American Jews in June averaged 60 percent, down from 68 percent in May (a change that corresponds with declining numbers among other groups, reflecting the president's inflated rating in May, post-bin Laden raid, Gallup said). Thirty-two percent of American Jews disapproved of the president's job in June.

By comparison, Gallup found that his approval rating among all groups in June averaged 46 percent.

The Washington Post reported last week that Obama's team will "go on the offensive against critics of his stance on Israel," with the help of Jewish supporters, including community leader Alan Solow, former Congressmen Mel Levin and Robert Wexler, and business executive Penny Pritzker.  

Obama's supporters say the plan is in effect an acknowledgment that conservative attacks on Obama's Israel stance have made defections among Jewish voters and donors a possibility they must take seriously. Obama's advisers see a need to push back even harder on the attacks than they did in 2008, in part because Obama now has a record on the issue to defend - a record that even Obama's supporters concede has not been adequately explained.

Obama won close to 80 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008. Politico reported last week that some Jewish Democratic Party donors were worried that Obama's stance on Israel could cost him support in 2012 in the Jewish community. 

In its analysis, Gallup challenged the Politico article, saying its conclusions may apply to "certain politically active members of the Jewish-American community," but are "not reflective of the views of Jewish Americans more generally."

Romney heading to London this week to raise money, may meet with PM Cameron

Read on

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacked President Barack Obama's assertion in his June 22 speech announcing the troop drawdown in Afghanistan that the "tide of war is receding." He said the country is facing a "tsunami of violence building offshore," according to Politico.

"I want to challenge the president to withdraw the phrase because it totally misleads the American people, and presents a delusional version of the world," he said at a Maryland Republican Party dinner in Baltimore.

Gingrich said the White House should have taken stronger action against Pakistan after it reportedly arrested CIA informants who helped the United States find Osama bin Laden.

"We should have taken extraordinary actions against Pakistanis -- within 24 hours," Gingrich told the crowd. "We should have said if you don't release those people you can assume we have no relationship and we'll chat with you from India."

He also accused the president of "sleepwalking" through the threat of a nuclear Iran.

Romney to fundraise in London

One of Mitt Romney's favorite knocks on Obama is that he is too European. In the words of the GOP frontrunner, the president takes "his inspiration not from the small towns and villages of New Hampshire but from the capitals of Europe." So, it might strike some people as a little surprising that Romney is planning to travel to London next month -- which, after all, is one of those "capitals of Europe" -- to attend a fund-raiser, according to the Boston Globe. Very few presidential candidates have held fundraisers on foreign soil. Rudy Giuliani was the first in 2007 -- also in London -- and Obama held one in the London home of Rupert Murdoch's daughter, Elizabeth, in 2008.

According to the Globe, suggested contributions for the July 6 party at Dartmouth House -- "a building not far from Hyde Park that has marble fireplaces, Louis XIV walnut paneling, and a painted ceiling by Pierre Victor Galland" -- is $2,500 a person.

Santorum and Beck discuss Israel

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was on Glenn Beck's Fox News show yesterday, and the pair discussed more than just kissing "on the mouth" -- though they did discuss that too.

Israel -- and specifically efforts to delegitimize Israel -- came up. Santorum said the United States should not force Israel to take part in negotiations since the "Palestinian Authority [and] others in the Middle East refuse to accept Israel's right to be there."

"Do you think America has enough courage to turn the tide on Israel," Beck asked the presidential candidate."

"If we had a strong leader who had the respect of the world," Santorum said. "We see now...a president backing away, who is an internationalist, someone who sees his role as almost transcending the presidency...and sees his role as to work with the international community to their ends. Not to the ends of the national security interest of our country. Not to the end of supporting allies who are strategic for us. But to the ends of some greater goal."

Whenever the two get together, the Middle East seems to come up. In April, they agreed that there is a coalition of "Sunni, Shia, socialists, and Islamists and jihadists working together [to form] a caliphate," Santorum said. Beck said the caliphate "begins with Turkey, Egypt and Iran."  

Afghanistan was obviously front and center on the minds of the Republican hopefuls today. With the race for the nomination heating up, the potential candidates wasted little time weighing in on Obama's plan. Here's a look at where they came down -- plus, some of today's other foreign-policy news from the field.

GOP Candidates: Obama went too far... or he didn't go far enough

The candidates' reactions to Obama's Afghanistan troop drawdown speech has been overwhelmingly negative. But they've been critical for different reasons.

Newly declared candidate Jon Huntsman wants a more rapid drawdown, and Ron Paul said Obama's plan is "too little, too late."

On Obama's right, Tim Pawlenty seemed to go the farthest, saying on Fox News after the speech he was deeply concerned about Obama's plan. "When America goes to war, America needs to win," he said. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, and Herman Cain, the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, agreed. "President Obama speaks of winding down our engagement in Afghanistan, but he does not emphasize the need for victory," Santorum said. Cain said Obama's plan "could embolden our enemy and endanger our troops."

Front-runner Mitt Romney took a more middle-of-the road view in a statement after the speech. "We all want our troops to come home as soon as possible, but we shouldn't adhere to an arbitrary timetable," he said.

Sarah Palin not going to Sudan

The former Alaska governor was supposed to travel to war-ravaged Sudan next month on a tour with the evangelical leader Franklin Graham and Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, but she pulled out this week. Sources close to her told the Washington Post it was because of scheduling conflicts, but it might also have had something to do with security concerns. One U.S. official told the paper that safety would prove to be a challenge. Even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might be forced to cancel a trip there -- planned to coincide with South Sudan's independence ceremony next month -- for security reasons.

Graham told the Post he hoped Palin could reschedule the trip soon. "She would be a very good person to help draw attention to the plight of the Christians in South Sudan," he said. "We've got George Clooney, we've got some Hollywood-type people. I'm very grateful for what Mr. Clooney has done. But we need everybody we can find."

Palin previously traveled with Graham to Haiti to tour the earthquake devastation there.

Jon Huntsman consults with Republican heavyweights

In an interview with Politico, the former ambassador to China and the newest entrant into the presidential field reveals he has been consulting with some heavy-hitters of the Republican national security establishment. According to Politico, the list includes former National Security Advisor to George H.W. Bush Brent Scowcroft, former Deputy Secretary of State to George W. Bush Richard Armitage, and former director of policy planning for the State Department under W. -- and current head of the Council on Foreign Relations -- Richard Haass. All three are known for their realist views and past criticisms of the Iraq war. The nature of the consultation wasn't characterized, but their foreign-policy philosophies would seem to mesh with that of the candidate, who also said in the interview he would support a fast drawdown of troops in Afghanistan. Huntsman didn't give numbers, but said he would lay out his plan when he gives a "major foreign-policy address" later this summer.

Jon Huntsman, the former Republican governor of Utah who crossed party lines to serve as President Barack Obama's ambassador to China, will stand in front of the Statue of Liberty tomorrow and announce he is running for president. Huntsman tends to get both foreign policy types and the cable news political punditocracy fired up -- He's moderate! He's friendly! He speaks Chinese! He worked for Obama! But is he an attractive candidate to anyone else-and most importantly, actual Republican voters?

The poll numbers would seem to suggest Huntsman has a long way to go. He finished dead last in the most recent Rasmussen poll of potential Republican candidates, with only 2 percent of likely voters saying they were inclined to cast their ballot for him. To put that into perspective, Mitt Romney got 33 percent of the vote. Herman Cain -- the pizza guy!-- got 10 percent. Even the option of "some other candidate" scored higher than Huntsman (8 percent).

Of course, this could all change once he's actively campaigning and participating in debates. But the rush to anoint him as a major candidate seems a bit premature. It doesn't help that the White House seems to be trying to kill him with kindness. Over the weekend Obama advisor David Axelrod told CNN "I think he's a very bright, fluent person." He said Huntsman's criticisms of the president were surprising because "he was very effusive about what the president was doing" when they talked in the past.

While Huntsman's ability to run the conservative gauntlet and seize the Republican nomination is still up for debate, China hands who have dealt with him and studied his tenure as U.S. envoy to Beijing give him high marks -- both diplomatically and politically.

"In terms of knowledge and diplomatic skills, I'd regard him as one of the best ambassadors we had," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a China expert at the Brookings Institution who met with Huntsman on several occasions in Beijing. "I thought he was very good. He related effectively to Chinese audiences. Part of that is he speaks Chinese well, but he also had a cultural sensitivity. I saw him when I made trips there. He was always on top of key issues."

Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China relations at the Asia Society, said he was also well-liked by the embassy staff.

"He is a very smart guy, quick on his feet, and he has a certain candor," he said. "We'll see if that remains when he starts campaigning."

Schell confirmed that his ability to speak Chinese opened doors for him in the country.

"He would go out in front of Chinese audiences-- he was a bit of a trained bear act. The Chinese adore anyone who can speak Chinese," he said.

If there was one discordant note to Huntsman's tenure as ambassador, it occurred when he got embroiled in a controversy about democratic reform in China near the end of his tour. There was a small pro-democracy demonstration outside a McDonalds in Beijing back in February and Huntsman showed up. He denied he was there to observe the demonstration, saying he was just in the wrong placed at the wrong time, but it caused some ripples in the Chinese government, which always suspected the United States was pushing a pro-democracy agenda, Lieberthal said.   

His last public talk as ambassador in April on the topic of U.S.-China relations also caused some controversy due to his specific criticisms of China human rights cases. He referenced imprisoned artist Ai Weiwei and Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and said, "The United States will never stop supporting human rights because we believe in the fundamental struggle for human dignity and justice wherever it may occur."

Could he have been setting himself up for a White House run by burnishing his bona fides on human rights issues and pushing a get-tough message? White House aides now say despite his past denials that he was considering a campaign in 2012, they suspect he had not always been straight with them about his political aspirations, according to the New York Times.

Beyond that, some critics say he has also already begun backpedaling on issues he once promoted, like climate change policy.

"My impression is he is an honorable man," said Schell. "We'll see whether the campaign will allow him to continue being an honorable man."

He does have one major thing going for him. In a sea of political bores, he is exciting. And people who have met with him say he has political skills that might surprise many.

"One time I brought a group of [Americans] to the embassy to meet with him,' said Lieberthal, who previously served in the Clinton administration. "There were seven people there besides me. He went around the table. It took him less than 30 seconds literally to establish some direct connection with each person. It reminded me of Clinton's skill on that level. He's the kind of politician who never forgets a name, never forgets a face."

A little Clinton magic couldn't hurt when you're at 2 percent in the polls.

What a difference four years makes! The new order of the day when it came to foreign policy and national security at last night's New Hampshire GOP debate was caution. On both Afghanistan and Libya, candidate after candidate urged an end to military adventurism -- sounding more like Ron Paul than George W. Bush or John McCain.

"We've learned that our troops shouldn't go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation," front-runner Mitt Romney said. "Only Afghanis can win Afghanistan independence from the Taliban."

"Our policy in Libya is substantially flawed," said Michele Bachmann, who just announced last night she was running. "We were not attacked, we were not threatened with attack, there was no vital national interest."

"We need to think fundamentally about reassessing our entire strategy in the region," Newt Gingrich said. "I think we should say to the generals we'd like to get out as rapidly as possible...we have got to have a totally new strategy for the region."

"Is it in the vital interest of the United States of America? If the answer is no, then we don't go any further," said Herman Cain, the businessman turned candidate, summing up his thinking on national security questions overseas. He quoted his mother on Libya: "It's a mess. There's more that we don't know than we do know. So it would be very difficult to know exactly what to do until we learn from the commanders in the field."

Ron Paul went further than the other candidates, not surprisingly: "I'd bring them home as quickly as possible.  And I'd get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn't start a war in Libya. I'd quit bombing Yemen and I'd quit bombing Pakistan...our national security is not enhanced by our presence over there."  

Despite the candidates' general agreement, foreign policy played a very small role in the debate -- taking up all of eight minutes at the end of the CNN-hosted event.

I'm in Maui for the holidays. Hey, somebody has to do it and anyhow I have a good excuse. My daughter and two grandchildren live out here and I have to visit them once in a while. So why not now? Besides, I'm not the only inside the Washington beltway type coming out here this Christmastide. Michelle, the two girls, and the dog arrived over the weekend and President Obama himself will be out just as soon as he signs into law all of the last-minute bills he has been able to milk out of the lame duck Democratic congress.

After the ordeal of the mid-term elections and the last months of this congress, the President for sure deserves some R&R and if Honolulu just happens to be his old hometown, so much the better. But while he's here he might do well to ponder aspects of the Hawaiian political scene that have similarities to and significance for the Washington scene to which he will only too soon have to return.

Start with Mufi Hannemann, the former mayor of Honolulu who lost to Neil Abercrombie in the Democratic primary for the nomination for governor. Just yesterday it turned out that losing was probably the best thing that ever happened to Hannemann. Sunday's Maui News reported that Hannemann has been hired to head up the Hawaii Hotel and Lodging Association, the lobby group that represents most of the islands' hotels. While in office, Mufi was a big promoter of the hotel industry and now the time has come for the private hand to wash the public one.

This kind of swinging door for lobbyists and government officials will no doubt make the president feel right at home, but it might also remind him of the promise he made to stop this kind of corruption in Washington. He hasn't even come close. Virtually all of his top economic advisers have been from Wall Street or closely associated with Wall Street. Rumors have it that the top candidates to replace Larry Summers as the head of the National Economic Council are also Wall Street types. Maybe while he's reading the local papers about Mufi, the president can reconsider and get someone from closer to Main Street instead. Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm or current GE CEO Jeff Immelt would be good candidates.

Another issue Obama ought to consider while in Hawaii is that of alternative energy and energy independence. It's not clear that the United States as a whole can become energy independent. But if there's one place in the world that should be energy independent it's Hawaii. I mean with all the sunshine, tidal forces, potentially energy-producing algae, sugar and macadamia nut waste out here, Hawaii should be the world's leading laboratory and showcase of alternative energy. It's not... not even close.

Take just solar cells. My cottage out here needs a new roof. So I called the local solar cell rep to get an estimate of the cost of installing the cells along with the new roof. The quoted cost was $40,000, but after federal and state tax credits the actual number I would have to pay came down to about $15,000. That's a nice discount to be sure, but $15,000 is still a significant number and that's why most houses in one of the world's great sunshine capitals don't have solar cells on their roofs. The cost is high because solar cells are not yet being produced in large enough quantities to achieve maximum economies of scale. Moreover, those that are being produced in large quantities are being produced in China not in the United States.

This is really a critical moment for the industry and for the United States. Already, major U.S. producers like Applied Materials have moved not only production but also even their R&D centers to China. While soaking up the rays out here where the major industry is tourism that pays low wages in a high cost area, the President ought to consider matching the Chinese effort and launching a serious Apollo Moon Shot like project to make America and Hawaii number one in a solar cell industry that would pay high wages and be at the leading edge of technology.

Finally, the president ought to visit some local stores and take a look at the prices. Gillette aftershave lotion costs double what it does in Washington D.C. as do most other goods. People call it the price of paradise, but actually it's the price of monopoly. The Jones Act requires that interstate shipping in U.S. coastal waters be carried in U.S. ships, and the shipping from the mainland of the United States over 2300 miles of Pacific ocean to the islands of Hawaii is considered inter-state coastal shipping for Jones Act purposes. So the result is that the Matson Line holds a monopoly on all shipments from the mainland of the United States to Hawaii and they, of course, charge monopoly prices. Both to relieve the citizens of Hawaii and to make American shipping competitive once again in international markets, the president ought to call for abolition of the Jones Act. It is just an excuse for monopolies protected by lobbyists to rip off ordinary citizens.

Whether Barack Obama will go down in history as a great or even good president will not be decided on the battle fields of Afghanistan. It will be decided by whether the American economy can compete effectively in the 21st century market place. How that must be done can actually be seen very clearly here in warm, sunny Hawaii. Wish you could all come.

Clyde Prestowitz is president of the Economic Strategy Institute and author of The Betrayal of American Prosperity.

With students rioting on the streets, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has (barely) survived a no-confidence vote in Italy's parliament today:

Mr. Berlusconi won by three votes in the lower house, with 314 in favor, 311 against and 2 abstentions. He also won a confidence motion in the Senate.

But he still lacks a clear parliamentary majority. Not even Mr. Berlusconi was strong -- or focused enough -- to hold together a fragile and ideologically incoherent center-right coalition that began unraveling after he split with a Mr. Fini, thereby losing his parliamentary majority.

He's hardly out of the woods. In January, Berlusconi faces yet another constitutional court challenge to his immunity from prosecution. Naturally, there's a legal follow-up to this vote, with widespread accusations of vote buying. And it's considered likely that he will have to call early elections for this spring.

Nobody ever got rich betting against Berlusconi's political survival skills, but it's worth considering who's likely to benefit if he is eventually taken down:

If Italy does go to early elections this spring, the Northern League is expected to register significant gains. Their point-man in the government is the well-respected finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, and in one scenario he might become prime minister.

So it's Berlusconi… or these people. Either way, Italy's political future is not looking bright. 

Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal has been one of the most intriguing figures in the debate over the "Ground Zero Mosque." al-Waleed is both a funder of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposed Park51 Islamic Center through his Kingdom Foundation and a part-owner of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the parent company of Fox News, whose on-air personalities have led the charge against the project. Jon Stewart, in particular, has had a field day with awkwardness this has caused for Fox.

But now, in his first public comments on the controversy, al-Waleed seemed to be taking the Fox News line in an interview with an Arabic business magazine:

Prince Alwaleed urged the backers of the proposed Islamic center not to "agitate the wound by saying, 'We need to put the mosque next to the 9/11 site.'"

"Those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York," the prince was quoted as saying by the magazine, which said the full interview will be published Sunday. "The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can't say, 'Let's just go back to where we were pre-9/11.'"

Prince Alwaleed, who chairs a Saudi investment company that has major stakes in international giants News Corp. and Citigroup, also said Muslims in New York should consider a more "dignified" location than the proposed site in lower Manhattan.

"It can't be next to a bar or a strip club, or in a neighborhood that is not really refined and good. The impression I have is that this mosque is just being inserted and squeezed over there," he said.

Rauf has already rejected the advice, saying, "we plan to build the community centre in this location because we have been part of Lower Manhattan for decades and we want to better serve the needs of our neighbours of all faith traditions." The project's co-chairman Shaikh Ubaid piled on, adding, "If Prince Alwaleed cares about Muslims in America, then he should take his money out of News Corp."

The timing of the prince's remarks is a little strange. The furor over the project has largely died down as America's culture-warriors have moved on to fresh outrages. Why would he want to stir it up again? Then again, as Simon Henderson writes, al-Waleed's political instincts have always been questionable at best.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister and style icon Yulia Tymoshenko is not happy about the new dress restrictions put in place by her rival, President Viktor Yanukovych:

"The Queen of England and (Libya's leader Muammar) Gaddafi, for instance, for sure would not have been allowed in the Cabinet," Tymoshenko, who is now a top opposition leader, quipped at a news conference Wednesday.

The code adopted this week calls on men working at the Cabinet of Ministers to wear mostly gray and dark blue suits and not wear the same suit to work two days in a row. Women are asked to stick to business suits and low-heeled shoes, and refrain from excessive makeup and jewelry.

Tymoshenko's stylish outfits and traditional Ukrainian braid have earned her a reputation as a glamour and fashion icon, but also angered some Ukrainians as too luxurious at a time when the country is battered by a severe economic crisis.

Some observers noted that a new dress code was overdue for government offices and other institutions in Ukraine, where women often wear tight, low-cut dresses to work while men are often seen in the same outfit for days in a row.

The Rada sure seems like an interesting place. 

On a related note, Colum Lynch takes a look at some of the more interesting sartorial choices made by leaders at the recent U.N. General Assembly meeting. 

As President Obama spoke before the U.N. General Assembly today, a new Gallup poll showed an American public far more trusting of their government on international rather than domestic affairs. 

Gallup's annual Governance survey finds 57% of Americans expressing a great deal or fair amount of trust in the U.S. government to handle international problems. That is down from 62% a year ago, but remains higher than the percentage trusting Washington to handle domestic problems, now at a record-low 46%.

In some sense, this result is a very strange one during the bloodiest year of an unpopular, decade-long war. Especially considering that this administration actively decided to send more troops to Afghanistan -- however reluctantly -- while the economy was in sorry shape before Obama came into office. 

But the polls may say less about the government's performance than where the country's attention and priorities right now. It's likely that the public gives the government decent marks on foreign policy simply because they haven't been paying very close attention to it.

Given the president that Americans' elected nearly two years ago, it's remarkable that foreign policy today seems too peripheral to the national conversation. Obama first distinguished himself from frontrunner Hillary Clinton because of his unwavering opposition to the war in Iraq and made restoring America's image in the world a major theme of his campaign, going so far as to hold a de facto campaign rally in Berlin at the height of the campaign. 

As James Traub wrote last March, while most presidents are elected for their domestic plans but remembered for their handling of foreign policy crises, Obama -- at least in the first half of his term -- has often seemed like an international president forced by circumstances to focus on domestic priorities:

When the White House announced last week that Obama would postpone a planned trip to Asia to lobby for his health-care legislation, it confirmed that foreign policy would take a back seat to America's grave domestic and political problems. The economic crisis, of course, had radically reshaped Obama's scale of priorities long before he assumed office; foreign affairs took up less than a quarter of his inaugural address. And then Republican intractability sent the debate over health-care reform into one sudden-death overtime after another. The world beyond America's borders is of course no less salient, and no less threatening, than ever; but Americans are looking at it through the wrong end of the binoculars. 

But with the Democratic majority in Congress likely to dwindle or even disappear in November, I wonder if foreign policy might play a larger role in the second half of this term (or at least what's left of it until the presidential election cycle overtakes events in 2011). As Peter Feaver has pointed out, there's less daylight between the White House and Congressional republicans on national security issues than on economic or domestic policy. And in any case, the president has far more leeway to act without congressional cooperation on foreign policy.

With major domestic initiatives likely stalled for the foreseeable future by an increasingly confident GOP, could we see a shift toward a more foreign policy-focused presidency? Lord knows there are plenty of neglected areas, from trade to Latin America to development policy (which Obama took on in another speech yesterday) that could benefit from some high-level attention, not to mention Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, the Mideast talks and climate change.

Obama's speech today didn't offer many hints of a new direction, though at least Indonesia's finally getting that visit it's been waiting for. 

Thousands of politicians all over the world are now on Twitter, and not all are using the social networking tool wisely. Take Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province, a businessman who owns the Daily Times newspaper and is said to have been close to Benazir Bhutto, the late prime minister.

On Saturday, he tweeted this ill-conceived joke:

"One of first politicians to condemn mad Florida pastor Terry Jones was Sara Palin who said 'it was inhuman to burn a Korean'! God bless USA"

Apparently not everyone got it, because he later tweeted:

"I'm amazed that the simplistic pathetic remarks to my JOKE that Sarah Palin can't tell difference between a KOREAN and QORAN! Humour?"

He followed up that tweet with this winner:

"My farms rice crop has never been better because of the rains.Almost ready now ,huge robust grain practically no canal water was required"

A bit insensitive, perhaps, given how the vast swaths of the country have been inundated by catastrophic flooding, not to mention the inherently sensitive politics of land ownership in Pakistan? No matter. When criticized by journalist Dean Nelson (@delhidean) of the Daily Telegraph, who asked, "will you give ur crop to farmers whose land was flooded by Sindh landowners?," Taseer tweeted resignedly: "These r retards i have 2 deal wth."

Nice.

Last weekend's inconclusive Australian election has produced the country's first hung parliament in 70 years. But as Patrick Dunleavy of the London School of Economics points out, the Australian result also marks another, albeit wonkier, milestone:

For the first time in history, the Australian outcome means that every key ‘Westminster model’ country in the world now has a hung Parliament. These are the former British empire countries that according to decades of political science orthodoxy are supposed to produce strong, single party government.

Besides Australia, the "Westminster model" countries Dunleavy refers to are India (governed by a Congress-led 18 party coalition), Britain (governmed by an unlikely Conservative-Liberal partnership), New Zealand (where no party has held a majority in parliament since 1996), and Canada (ruled by a minority government.)

Thanks to its "first-past-the-post" voting rules, where the largest vote-getter in each district picks up its seat, the Westminster System traditionally favors larger parties and majority governments, unlike, say, Germany where coalition governments are the norm. 

So why has it become so hard for parties to produce majority governments, even in electoral systems specifically designed to encourage them? I would suspect it has something to do with the shrinking ideological differences between the parties in these systems -- India being an obvious exception -- but it's certainly a quesiton worth pondering. 

Though before reform efforts get too rash, citizens of parliamentary democracies should keep in mind that there's plenty of potential for obstructionism and dysfuntction in a government with only two parties as well.  

Hat tip: The Monkey Cage

According to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, Barack Obama's biggest problem and the reason for his sagging poll numbers isn't the still-high unemployment rate or the oil in the Gulf, it's that -- unlike the Gipper -- folks just don't know what he's about: 

The comparison to Reagan may give Obama cheer, but it is not really apt. For even in Reagan's darkest days when, according to Gallup, six out of 10 Americans reported that they did not like the job he was doing, an astounding six in 10 nevertheless said they liked the man himself. He was, of course, phenomenally charming, authentic and schooled at countless soundstages in appearing that way. Just as important, the public had faith in the consistency of his principles, agree or not. This was the Reagan Paradox and it helped lift his presidency.

No one is accusing Obama of being likable. He is not unlikable, but he lacks Reagan's (or Bill Clinton's) warmth. What's more, his career has been brief. He led no movement, was spokesman for no ideology and campaigned like a Nike sneaker -- change instead of swoosh. He seems distant. No Irish jokes from him. For the average voter, he casts no shadow.

Leaving Obama's insufficient Irishness aside for a moment, one might expect that at this point, Cohen would provide a comparable likability stat for Obama to contrast with the "astounding" six in ten who like Reagan... but there's a small problem with that. From the writeup of the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll: 

A silver lining for Obama is that his personal scores are still strong: 64 percent give him high marks for being easygoing and likeable, and 51 percent give him high marks for being compassionate enough to understand average people.

So by Cohen's standard, Obama is also "astoundingly" likable. Maybe the jobs are a bigger deal than the jokes after all.