A Transatlantic Coup de Main

When Boris Johnson was elected Mayor of London, I was of course disappointed that Ken Livingstone had not won, but his successor did not make so bad of an impression. I thought that his "buffoonery" was more of a façade than an indication of fundamental incompetence. This impression was justified when, through Hendrik Hertzberg's blog, I came across his endorsement of Barack Obama in the Daily Telegraph. (Even if, on a purely pedantic writerly level, I think that his use of the term "double whammy" is too undignified.) Of course I don't think it's ethical for a politician to declare support for an electoral candidate in a foreign country (except if, let's say, the candidate's opponent is a dictator); still, it appears to be a common practice. In any case, what I liked was not even so much the fact that Johnson is for Obama, but how he explains his reasons for the endorsement. It does not come across as an opportunistic leap to the winning team, but as the cumulation of long-term thought. I also like the surprisingly nuanced tone. In any case, my favourite sentence is possibly this one:

If Obama wins, then the United States will have at last come a huge and maybe decisive step closer to achieving the dream of Martin Luther King, of a land where people are judged not on the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.