A response by President Obama during his press conference this morning with Gordon Brown:

Q Prime Minister, thank you very much, indeed. Nick Robinson, BBC News. A question for you both, if I may. The Prime Minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany blame both Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn’t the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I would say that if you look at the sources of this crisis, the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that had taken place in the global financial system.

I think what is also true is that here in Great Britain, in continental Europe, around the world, we were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and the highly integrated global capital markets that had emerged.

So at this point, I’m less interested in identifying blame than fixing the problem. And I think we’ve taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so — not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring that banks are adequately capitalized, dealing with the enormous drop-off in demand and the contraction that’s been taking place, but more importantly for the long term, making sure that we’ve got a set of regulations that are up to the task.

There’s been a lot of talk in the MSM about the fact that the Anglo-American bloc and the Euro zone cannot agree on whether to emphasize fiscal stimulus (allegedly the former’s preference) or regulation (allegedly the latter’s).  Sarkozy’s hysterical threat this morning to walk out of the G-20 meeting hasn’t helped matters.  But if you read Obama’s answer, it’s pretty straightforward:  we need both.

One of the things Obama does well is not accept false dichotomies.  His world is neither bipolar (in both meanings of the word), nor black and white.  He recognizes nuance.  As a result, he has little trouble swatting aside “how long have you been beating your wife” questions such as the one from Robinson.

It’s no small irony that the heir to Bush’s title as drama-queen-in-chief is Sarkozy.  Who says we don’t have anything in common with the French?

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