Hannan Does an Obama 180

Because this video went viral, some may not know that the same Daniel Hannan publicly supported Barack Obama for president in 2008. Now, he's taking all those words back.

In three and a half years of blogging, this has been my single most unpopular post. There’s little point, I know, in reminding readers that my support for Barack Obama was qualified; that I simultaneously endorsed GOP Congressional candidates; that I never saw Obama as a messiah and, indeed, was repelled by the millenarian fervour of his supporters. Nor is there much purpose in rehearsing John McCain’s shortcomings. The fact remains that I backed the Democrat.

I was wrong. Not that Obama is without his good points, obviously. His commitment to school choice is unfeigned. His foreign policy has been a jolly sight cheaper than McCain’s would have been. The election of a mixed-race president who opposed the Iraq war has made the USA slightly more popular.

None of these advantages, however, can make up for the single most important fact of Obama’s presidency, namely that the federal government is 30 per cent larger than it was two years ago

It should surprise no one that Hannan has no use for Obama's massive government expansion policies. More interesting is how Hannan, like most Brits, views Obama's anti British policies. He sees some of the slights: the bad gift to Brown, sending Churchill's best back, etc., as a "nuisance". In fact, Hannan was most concerned with the Obama administration siding with the "Peronist" in Argentina over Britain in a dispute over the Falkland Islands. That story has gotten little attention in the U.S. but it continues a trend of the Obama administration siding with Leftists.

Hannan, like most Brits, is none too happy with Obama's demonization of BP. First, he points out that British Petroleum doesn't exist since it's 40% owned by Britain and 39% owned by Americans. Second, he also points out that American companies Halliburton and Transocean haven't been demonized the way that BP has been. Britain joins Israel, Eastern Europe and Colombia as American allies not sure where they stand with the Obama administration.