I’d get confused and think you were talking about Bill Gates.
Eisenhauer might have been the leader of the free world. Nobody since.
Or the king of the Lizard People.
I don’t agree with the term although it doesn’t offend me - I just write it off as the usual jingoism.
Just because the POTUS is the leader of the most powerful country in the world it doesn’t mean that the POTUS is automatically the leader of everyone. A leader only leads when there are those who choose to follow, and if Bush demonstrated anything well, it was that.
If the US actually starts to lead the “Free World” in terms of benevolent social, environmental and foreign policy (not just pretty words, but actions) and draws the support of the “Free World” then I’d say that the POTUS could be considered The Leader of the Free World. But I see no sign off that happening yet, although Obama looks to have the greatest potential for it. But we’ll see if he actually delivers.
Dutch in the Netherlands here.
Leader of the free world? Like RNATB said, “De facto Leader of The Free World? Of course not. Closest thing available? Sure.”
Our Dutch economy is a little trader’s ship on the world economy, which is largely, but not exclusively, determined by the USA. Economic decisions by the POTUS will sooner or later affect us.
But in what I might call “personal politics” (social politics affecting the Dutch only, mostly) we are very much independent of the USA, and we treasure that independence.
As for military might: power walks a tight balance between the UN and the USA. I feel power to interfere in other countries should remain in the hands of the UN, not in the hands of the USA. But I also feel the UN, as it is, isn’t perfect yet and is by no means qualified yet to be the worlds friendly neighbourhood cop. Is the USA? Neither. The USA is the enhusiastic, energetic, muscled, armed, idealistic neighborhood vigilante. I sometimes applaud what he does, (hell: they liberated my country just 40 yeras ago!). I sometimes feel he makes matters much worse, and for the wrong reasons. But it can’t be denied that he DOES something, thereby often prompting the UN into action. And doing something is the hallmark of a leader.
It’s accurate at least.
I still don’t see why a term is needed though. He is the POTUS. What more needs be said?
He does not lead the free world. He is the most influential and powerful person but there are a lot of people who have a lot of power and influence apart from him.
If every other country in the world really, truly believed that the President of the United States actually *was *the Leader of the Free World, then they would have to accept that their countries were merely in service to the US - and y’know, it’s that kind of attitude that strains good relations between neighbours.
This one seems like a nice fellow. Why mess up potentially beautiful inter-country relationships by pissing people off with a needlessly arrogant and provocative title like “Leader of the Free World”?
Same reason the Major League Baseball playoff final is called the “World Series”, or that the champions of the National Football League are commonly referred to as “World Champions”.
Because Americans are needlessly arrogant.
We don’t have any posters from the world’s largest democracy to weigh in on this one, do we? They’ve probably got the best case to be irritated by this.
I’d say jingoistic but harmless. I only hear it used in two kinds of cases: TV pundits talking about how important the president is, and people talking about how much the president has let them down.
It bothers me because it doesn’t make any sense to me. If someone can just be declared ‘Leader of the Free World’ without any sort of mandate from said world to do so, then said world is not really ‘free’ - how can they be if they can be said to be ‘led’ by someone they had no say in the selection of? That is no freedom, certainly not any kind of democratic freedom.
The phrase is logically bankrupt and therefore a useless piece of, well, propaganda - that exists to give a few jingoistic Americans here and there a warm 'n fuzzy. It can only ever be used in an utterly meaningless sense. Excepting some future case in which a bunch of nations, having declared themselves as constituting the ‘free world’, get together and elect an official leader.
The President of the United States is arguably the most powerful person in the world, but is the leader of only one country.
I agree that’s a very awkward phrase, perhaps even offensive.
As for why it’s used, I think newspaper columnists in the U.S. just got tired of typing “President of the United States” and wanted to think of a good-sounding “synonym”. This happened many decades ago, so it’s not like this is a recent coinage, and the feelings of people in other countries was not a consideration I’m sure.
Ed
It seems obvious that Bush considered himself the leader of the free world, unless he privately ceded that title to Cheney. Remember all that New American Century crapola? Fortunately, other than the poodle and a few others, the free world refused to be lead.