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> I also guess, that we should internalize the thought, that the really mighty in this world are not on the cover pages of the newspapers and those on the cover pages are less mighty as we shall think.

This is the correct answer. The presidency is now almost entirely a figure head, a proxy for the people that really control the actions of the United States.

There was a mood of immense excitement thrilling through all of them. Together and between them they had gone to and beyond the furthest limits of physical laws, restructured the fundamental fabric of matter, strained, twisted and broken the laws of possibility and impossibility, but still the greatest excitement of all seemed to be to meet a man with an orange sash round his neck. (An orange sash was what the President of the Galaxy traditionally wore.) It might not even have made much difference to them if they'd known exactly how much power the President of the Galaxy actually wielded: none at all. Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

Zaphod Beeblebrox was amazingly good at his job.

Fits very much. Thank you!

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has a lot of good social satire in it. They cut far too much of that from the film.

I think, that's the reason, they cut it!

"besides those of letting some stupid low level soldiers be the escape goats"

I think ex-Brigadier General Janis Karpinski would beg to differ, per Wikipedia she "was reprimanded for dereliction of duty and demoted to the rank of Colonel on May 5, 2005", which of course also ended her Army career that year.

I would argue there's almost as much gross overstatement of how bad G. W. Bush was as there is overstatement of how good Obama is. Certainly a lot of people are coming to that conclusion, perhaps in part as we see so many examples of things that were bad when Bush did them that are somehow good when done by Obama. Bush's biggest crimes were beating Gore and therefore ending the Clinton era, and of course Governing While Republican.

>I think ex-Brigadier General Janis Karpinski would beg to differ

Might be, but: 1) She did not get into prison and Colonel is not so much of a demotion ... (of course I do not know, what her part was in all this exactly and how much guilt she carries herself, so the demotion might be harsh) You can might also see it not as demotion for tortures that happened, but a demotion, because it got into the open.

2) Also a Brigadier General was not the root of the problem. Just another escape goat ... a higher one, but not really high one. In my opinion, much of the administration in between and the minister of defense is at least also to blame. Also to my knowledge, no one of the agencies that where largely responsible for many acts of torture (more responsible in my opinion than many soldiers) did not get any kind of punishment.

This is a shame for the whole western world! From this moments on, we can not raise our heads or arise our voices against so called rogue-states or regimes ... because we act the same! Bending basic laws of humanity to our liking! SHAME!

I don't think even the announcements mattered - he got the peace prize for not being Bush. The world breathed a collective sigh of relief that the US didn't vote in another half-insane Republican.

Obama's policies were relatively unimportant - he was the lesser of two evils, where the greater evil was pretty much the anointed successor of Satan from the point of view of large parts of the world (his policies didn't matter either; he could've been replaced by Mother Theresa and the taint of association with Bush would still have been there). That's how badly Bush alienated even huge numbers of people internationally who have traditionally been very right wing and very pro-US.

Consider that e.g. Clinton was very well liked internationally, yet he got nothing like the reception Obama got.

Obama's election was the first and only time where I heard of tons of non-Americans going to parties celebrating the US election. There was a very real sense of elation, especially given the kick in the face and disappointment and total and utter disbelief the Bush re-election created last time around.

I can't figure out what point you're trying to make. GP pretty much stated in his first paragraph what your comment explained.

Does any of that matter? The only reason they thought he was better than Bush was because he made promises that sounded good, but he didn't actually keep them. That's the issue here.