A quote from Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register, 11 December 2009

Oh, come on. Herman van Rompuy. He's some Belgian cove who was recently appointed "president" of "Europe," whatever that means. He's hardly a household name, even in the van Rompuy household. I'm not sure if Belgian TV has a "Belgian Idol" or "Dancing With The Belgians," but, if so, he'd be knocked out in Round One.

Nonetheless, Rich Lowry does "President" van Rompuy a grave injustice. The boringness is, as the computer chappies say, not a bug but a feature. Like everything in Europe, the "presidency" was a backroom stitch-up, and neither the French nor the Germans wanted a charismatic glamorpuss in the gig, stealing their respective thunders. A Belgian nonentity was just what they were looking for. Being a nondescript yawneroo was the minimum entry qualification. And, by those standards, Herman van Rompuy is performing brilliantly.

[…] To return to what's-his-name, the Belgian bloke, van Rumpoy, just because he's a nonentity doesn't mean he's not effective. In his acceptance speech the other week, he declared: "2009 is the first year of global governance."

Did you get that memo?

Me, neither. But he has a point. The upgrading of the G20, Gordon Brown's plans for planetary financial regulation, and the Copenhagen climate summit (whose inauguration of a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies would be the biggest exercise in punitive liberalism the developed world has ever been subjected to) are all pillars of "global governance." Right now, if you don't like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you're sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don't like "global governance"? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?

America has its Herman van Rumpoys, too. Harry Reid is really the Harry van Reidpoy of Congress. Very few people know who he is or what he does. But, while Obama continues on his stately progress from one 4,000-word dirge to the next, Reid's beavering away, advancing the cause of van Rumpoy-scale statism.