KEY POINTS:
John Key has spent half his time as Prime Minister out of the country. He had to pop off to pick up his poncho at Apec, but I'm not sure what the benefit was of stopping off to see the Queen.
It seems it was to give an assurance that her New Zealand subjects were determined to remain the last South Seas outpost of the British Empire.
Contrast this to the real change leader, Barack Obama, who doesn't appear to have any spare time to go touristing. He's too busy trying to save the American economy and, by extension, ours. Obama was elected in the same week as Key but has had to use all his time rescuing capitalism from meltdown. The mess was created by the ideological madness of right-wingers who have been running amok with the world's finances during the past eight years.
New Zealand isn't quite in the same economic space because we had Helen Clark, rather than Don Brash, running things.
All the experts and the establishment figures are praising Obama's economic strategy and senior managers. We'd better hope they are right, otherwise it doesn't matter what Key or Finance Minister Bill English do, we will be in deep doggy-doo.
But surely no one has any doubt (with the exception of Roger Douglas) that turbo capitalism as practised by corporate America has been exposed for the corrupt sham that it is.
The high priests of neoliberalism, who only months ago were lauding the great success of unregulated financial and corporate markets, are now advocating massive state intervention to save their rotten system. The sight of corporate chiefs begging the state to "nationalise" them must have Karl Marx spinning in his grave.
Wall St has turned into Alice's Wonderland, where right-wing free marketers want socialist solutions to save capitalism. The prospect of a poor black kid stepping in to save their wealth and privileges is richly ironic.
Some on the left are convinced capitalism has proven to be unworkable and is entering its dying phase. Despite a temptation to crow, my observation is that capitalism is adaptable and with Obama throwing trillions of dollars of public money into corporate America it should survive. Obama's economic decisions probably have a greater effect on our wellbeing than those taken by our Government.
In the immediate future, Obama will be bogged down resolving his country's economic mess
so he won't have much time in his first term to sort out the rest of the world. That's obviously why he picked Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. The US ruling elites claim she has the star power internationally, although the evidence is light. It's probably true she is highly competent, although her campaign management was a disaster and she failed when husband Bill Clinton put her in charge of introducing a public health system.
I thought former UN ambassador Bill Richardson would have been better. He's more attuned to the Obama consensus style, whereas Clinton is a hardliner and I suspect a bit of dramatist.
Obama feels confident enough to send his rival around the world keeping the rest of us in line, hopefully not making things worse as the current regime has done. We shall see.
But that said, and without trying to be too simplistic, the elevation of Obama into the world's top job does hold out the chance of bringing peace to many hot spots. Even Cuban President Raul Castro wants a meeting. The US has economically blockaded Cuba for nearly 40 years as a punishment after it overthrew a corrupt US-backed regime. Anti-Castro right-wing zealots in the US have terrified any politician who dared to question this silliness.
Fortunately, many of the hardline Republicans backing the sanctions were defeated earlier this month - Obama won their home base, Florida. Despite a lot of criticism, Obama stuck to his campaign line that he would talk to American's perceived enemies without pre-conditions, including Cuba. There is a distinct possibility one of America's more shameful policies will soon be erased.
Even in the Middle East, the protagonists on all sides were secretly routing for an Obama victory.
Hamas, Hizbollah and moderates in Iran had a strategy of not making any public comments of support during the campaign, which Obama's opponents could use to whip up controversy.
Having a dim-witted ideologue as the US President for the past eight years has been hell for all of them. They know they need an intelligent pragmatist to help them out the hole they've all dug.
Even senior Israeli leaders have said the only way there can be peace in their region is for Obama to make US support of Israel conditional on them pulling their forces out of the West Bank and Gaza.
The problem isn't solely Hamas, as some would have us believe. If the right-wingers win Israel's elections, Obama is going to have to get Clinton to show a bit of tough love.
The situation is the same throughout the world. Just maybe Obama's promise to bring change we can believe in can happen.
It's a new world order.
So someone needs to tell Key there is no British Empire and the Queen is just a tourist attraction.
The sooner we change the better.
