IT TOOK 121 days in office for President Barack Obama to be exposed as the hypocrite so many of us hoped he wouldn't be.

His government's decision to introduce the Dairy Export Incentive Program flies in the face of everything the President has been saying about free trade and the need to avoid protectionism.

Indeed, his agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, in announcing the new dairy subsidies, had the audacity to say, "the Obama Administration remains strongly committed to the pledge by the leaders of the Group of Twenty to refrain from protectionist measures".

What a load of rubbish.

The dairy export subsidies introduced by Obama and Vilsack is pure protectionism that will cruel the global dairy industry - the US included.

Dairy farmers who had been seeing a glimmer of hope in world prices will now see them drop again, or at least continue to bump along the bottom for much longer than need be.

That the US has decided to follow the morally bankrupt European Union in introducing subsidies demonstrates a number of things.

First, despite the words of President Obama, the US continues to be an arrogant monolith that does not understand it operates in a global community.

Secondly, the president is just another in a long line of politicians who says one thing and does another.

Third, and finally, the US dairy industry, and presumably US agriculture in general, refuses to be weaned off the teat of government handouts - and the US Government does not have the backbone to break the welfare cycle.

Barack Obama came to office promising to be different, to govern for all, and not take the easy path of political expediency to win votes.

In one fell swoop last week, he showed himself to be a hypocrite

Sorry Mr President, you've just lost us.