I mentioned this article earlier today in another post...

Here is that article by Tony Blair... where he reminds us that the biggest thing we have to be proud of is our country... our citizenship of this country.
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in Time.com

Tony Blair on Clinton, Bush and the American Character

By Tony Blair Thursday, Sep. 02, 2010

EXCERPTS:

Bill had inimitable resilience. (When you reflect on what he went through during the impeachment saga, you have to sit down. It's too much. How could he, how did he, survive it? But he did, leaving office with an approval rating of more than 60%.) He was preternaturally cool under fire. And he was, of course, a brilliant President. At times he made it look easy. He ran a good economy, made big reforms, handled the Kosovo crisis with real leadership. It is fascinating to speculate how he would have handled later world-changing events, the whole crisis and sequence of tough decisionmaking that was started by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. There neither charm nor intellect would have been sufficient. It would have been pure caliber that determined the outcome. I believe he would have had it.

George Bush was straightforward and direct. And very smart. One of the most ludicrous caricatures of George is that he was a dumb idiot who stumbled into the presidency. No one stumbles into that job, and the history of American presidential campaigns is littered with political corpses of those who were supposed to be brilliant but who nonetheless failed because brilliance is not enough. To succeed in U.S. politics — or in the U.K. — you certainly have to be clever, otherwise you will be eaten alive; but you have to be more than clever.

However, over time, and more even in retrospect as events have continued to unfold after I left office, I have come to admire the simplicity, the directness, almost the boldness of George, finding in it strength and integrity. Sometimes, in the very process of reasoning, we lose sight of the need for a destination, for finding the way out of the labyrinth to solid ground that stands the test not of a few weeks, months or even a year or two, but of the vastness of the judgment of history.

Then there is Barack Obama, who stepped into the aftermath of the financial crisis and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And as if that weren't enough, he faces the challenges of avoiding a double-dip recession and preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear-weapons capability. As ever, with a new leader, the political character cannot be fully formed or comprehended immediately but happens over time. The personal character, however, is clear: this is a man with steel in every part of him. The expectation of his presidency was beyond exaggeration. The criticism is now exaggerated. He has remained the same throughout. And believe me, that is hard to do. I achieved that serenity only at the end.

I think I understand what the new President is trying to do. He is less opposed to some of the aims of the previous President than is supposed, or even politically convenient to admit. He is under no illusions as to the scale of the economic or security challenge and, in his own way, every bit as tough as George. He is trying to shape a different policy to meet these aims, avoiding market excesses in economics and the alienation of America from its allies, potential or actual, in meeting the security challenge.

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That is in the middle of the article..

It is definitely worth reading in full.  It was interesting to read his perspective on the past and current US presidents...

It is also interesting to read his reminder to all of us, (and presumably also to the POTUS) that it is good to have pride in our country.

I found his perspective especially on Afghanistan quite well informed and deep. A meeting between Blair and Obama may be a good thing.