When Obama took his first European tour during the presidential campaign, critics pejoratively labeled him an “international pop star.” Now, as the end of Obama’s first 100 days nears, it is clear that he cannot take himself out of campaign mode long enough to run the country. President Obama took his “wow the crowd” campaign style to Europe and the Middle East, at times demanding larger public arenas for his speeches than those arranged by host governments so he could continue to spread the love. In his effort to make everyone in the international community like him, Obama took the liberal tradition of “blaming America first” to new levels.

“I take responsibility, even if I wasn’t even president at the time,” Obama avowed at the G20 conference, stunning world leaders by publicly accepting U.S. responsibility for starting the current global economic crisis. The political message here is “blame America first, but remember, it is really all Bush’s fault.” Having accepted blame for the entire world’s economic problems, it should not be surprising that Obama agreed to the creation of a global Financial Stability Board, which will oversee “all important world financial institutions.” The creation of FSB marks an unknown, thus scary era of international oversight, and promises potential chipping away at United States capitalism and individual freedoms by global authority. At least they haven’t handed Citibank over to the U.N. to manage (yet).

But with all the charisma he could muster, and with all the cooperation he demonstrated at the G20 conference, Obama was unable to persuade Europe into supporting his plans for Afghanistan.

Obama’s last stop in his tour was in Turkey, a strategic move to fully emphasize his regime’s support of that country and distance himself further from his predecessor. In Turkey, Obama declared that the United States was not at war with Islam. As Ann Coulter is the only conservative who ever came close to condemning the religion of Islam, it’s a good thing Obama cleared that one up. Obama heaped praises on Turkey as a “strong and secular democracy” and called for and fully endorsed its admission to the European Union. In so doing, he ignored and overrode the objections of the members of the European Union to the admission of Turkey to the EU. Surely the leaders of France and Germany appreciated this very public snub. Perhaps as much as Obama and other U.S. leaders would appreciate Merkel or Sarkozy visiting Puerto Rico and publicly championing its interminable and futile quest for U.S. statehood.

In Prague, President Obama continued his tour theme of “blame America first,” calling for a world without nuclear weapons. “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he declared, and insisted that the goal of complete nuclear disarmament would be possible when led by the United States. North Korea celebrated his statement with a missile launch. Obama’s belief that rogue nations would willingly disarm, when led by the U.S., is downright terrifying in its arrogance. Liberals want to deny any need for the existence of guns and nuclear weapons by espousing utopian ideals. Liberals across the country are calling for tougher gun control laws in response to recent shootings in Binghamton and Pittsburgh, but only the ultra-liberal Obama would respond to North Korean aggression by calling for disarmament. Even The New York Times called Obama’s calls for disarmament a ploy to “skirt for now what should be done about Iran and North Korea.”

At his NATO press conference in Strasbourg, Obama undermined the concept of American exceptionalism, which would imply that the United States holds a unique place in the world by virtue of its values, history, resources and strength. Obama stated, “I believe in American exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” Perhaps the president should ask someone on his staff to look up the word “exceptional.” Or maybe this was less of a vocabulary gaffe than a glimpse at Obama’s plan for America. If he continues to act in his “blame America first” way to lessen the strength and respectability of our great nation, then America indeed may become rather unexceptional. The pursuit of a deterioration of our status among world powers is not the change we hoped for.