Russia and China: Obama won't finish first term

We don't want to credit the Commies with too much here, after all, Commies are Commies. But they are major world players and they don't like us very much.

A piece by Ann Applebaum in the Washington Post couches their sentiments that Obama won't finish his first term in terms of the Commies' inability to comprehend how a guy like Obama could be elected to the presidency (frankly some of us Americans are still wondering the same thing), and how the bad guys just can't grasp the wonderous mysteries of democracy.

Nevertheless, the Russian and Chinese governments tend to see the world as grim realists, and don't get caught up in Hope and Change too easily.

Russia gives Obama a couple of years and then the GOP will again take the reins.

Look, for a typical example, at Pravda.ru, the Russian Web site that succeeded the organ of the Soviet Communist Party. Writing in the spirit of times past, one of its authors informed readers last week that Obama's presidency was a sham. After all, he "became the president because one needed a scapegoat during hard times of the crisis," and he will not last: "If Obama does not manage to extricate the nation from the crisis in two or three years, the Republicans will unveil their real candidate, and Obama's presidency will finish earlier than expected." The U.S. president, in other words, is merely a placeholder -- a description that makes him sound remarkably similar to the president of Russia.

Are they talking about a resignation? Impeachment? I would be curious to know who the Republicans' "real candidate" is so I can send her some money.

The Chinese are a little less oblique about Obama's fate.

One Chinese academic wrote that many of his compatriots were confident that the "impossible" election of Obama would be disrupted by "something dramatic, similar to John F. Kennedy's assassination." After the inauguration, one high-ranking official shifted the line somewhat and denounced the process, calling on China to build defenses against the "erroneous" ideas of Western democracy (Chinese television was wary enough of these erroneous ideas to censor Obama's inaugural address, even as it was being broadcast live).

The Secret Service might want to make a house-call in Beijing to see if there is something going on we should know about.