Miss Him Yet?

Europe was said to have hated George W. Bush.

But in President Bush’s second term, friendly governments in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy could count on American support in any crisis that might threaten the wealthy but defenseless European Union.

Now, with Obama’s real interests unclear, these countries are, like spurned teenage lovers, acting out their worries in neurotic fashion. Sometimes lovestruck Europe gets sassy and slights its indifferent heartthrob.

Obama flew into Copenhagen for an hour, thought he could charm the infatuated Europeans who dominate the International Olympic Committee to give Chicago the 2016 Games, and then blithely jetted out — only to learn on his way home that his hometown bid had been rejected.

At other times, as with the Nobel Peace Prize, a gushing and desperate Europe gives him almost anything to gain his affection and attention.

Now that Obama has been granted the award, the Norwegians are babbling about “vision” and “hope,” rather than real achievement, as the basis for their decision.

Perhaps the tiny country hopes that if it gives Obama an award for utopian pacifism, then he most surely will have to act like a European utopian pacifist rather than commander-in-chief of the most powerful nation in history.