Thoughtful piece on Europeans' impressions of Obama (Christian Science Monitor)

[Aloha Spirit]

So, I'm pretty floored at how a lot of news outlets seem to have come to an early concensus that Obama's European tour is a disappointing step backward for the US.
(See this CNN piece by Zakaria: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/04/03/zakaria.g20/index.html)

But you know how the media seems to get it wrong here in the US, and how opinion polls keep showing Obama's strength?
I think the same thing is happening, even with some of this international news coverage.

I found a piece from the CSM that is very positive, and thoughtful.
If you find positive reviews of Obama's trip, please post!!
Here are a couple quotes from the CSM piece:

In London, in a last-minute compromise that many called historic, the White House got far more stimulus to relight the global trade economy than many thought possible. However, at NATO's 60th anniversary here in Strasbourg, he may not get more troops for Afghanistan – though the new "Afpak" review indicates such troops are needed even for the civil building that Europeans say will aid in "mission accomplished" there.

But the "Obama in Europe" storyline runs deeper than a difficult diplomatic checklist that includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the global crisis, say political thinkers here. It has to do with a Europe that, for 40 years, and in significant strides, has sought to speak with one voice.

For almost a decade, Europe and America, tied by history, drifted apart in terms of stated values and policy. But with an avowedly liberal internationalist at the US helm, Europe has less to complain about. Ahead of his visit, in inconclusive meetings in Brussels, there was uncertainty and bickering. What's causing stress in the European Union is not US badgering and unilateralism, but the Obama dynamic of moving toward agreement, concensus, and multilateralism, say some economists and political scientists.

In other words, contrary to some analysts, Obama is accumulating more US influence at the same time that the Europeans are become less united.

"President Bush was an extraordinary catalyst for Europe, a bogeyman. Even people with diverging views on economic and foreign policy were united against the US policy," says Karim Bitar, a Paris consultant and scholar at the Institute for International and Strategic Relations. "But now the US can no longer be accused of all the world's ills. The truth is, Europeans now think more about America than about Europe. There is no European consensus on the most basic questions of our future, what we should be. Under Bush, we could evade them. Not now."

Some in Europe were strongly denouncing Obama's economic prescription just prior to his trip... it's interesting, that they seem more docile when he's actually in the room, lol.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0402/p06s13-wogn.html

[PA Democrat]

1. I'll pass on CNN's Fareed Zakaria's opinions on foreign policy.

Zakaria supported George W. Bush's totally cool adventures in Iraq. He said this back in 2003 about invading Iraq:

“The place is so dysfunctional... any stirring of the pot is good. America’s involvement in the region is for the good."


I like the CSM article as well. Thanks for posting!

[Aloha Spirit]

4. Ah, yes, his position on Iraq. I just read about it in a NYTimes book review...

Michiko Kakutani's review of his Post-American World or whatever.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/books/06kaku.html

Obama read that book last summer (he was carrying it around).
It's funny, because if you read the book, it seems like Obama is doing everything that Zakaria would want a President to be doing, in terms of shoring up American power.
Whatever, he does seem confused, and I'll too pass on his opinion here.

[PA Democrat]

11. Interesting that Obama has read his book.

I am getting the impression that there a lot of people in the media who feel they must be critical of Obama lest they be accused of being too easy on him, as they were on a daily basis by Republicans during the campaign. The networks are eager to air the views of anyone who has negative opinions on the President's performance. How convenient that Zakaria also happens to have a book to sell.

I had a vague recollection of the Zakaria quote on the Iraq invasion because I've always been deeply troubled by people who are able to make such flippant remarks about war. Perhaps his insistence that the invasion of Iraq has made us safer is how he rationalizes his support for a war that has killed so many US troops and so many Iraqi civilians.

[Cha]

7. He obviously doesn't know

what he's talking about.

[lunatica]

2. I think what's happening is the riots in the UK and in France

It's obvious the people aren't happy about things that we all have in common, like the world banks and terrorism and the tinder box in the Middle East and they're beginning to have very tense demonstrations, some of which are getting to look more like riots now. This is making the leaders of the European countries very very nervous and some of the leaders are disagreeing about what needs to be done. The timing of Obama coming in to try to get everyone to pull together in the economic mess makes it look like he may be causing the dissent among some countries, but the reality is they're practically helpless right now. No single country can make things OK for their citizens. It simply can't be done anymore. I think their really feeling the pressure from the populace because jobs are becoming scarcer and scarcer.

This morning I heard that here in the US there was another half-million plus jobs lost.

[Aloha Spirit]

8. I think you're right, as Zakaria pointed to a British article that talks about that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/01/barack-obama-g20

"...Obama arrived last night on the eve of what organisers promise will be a raucous day of anti-globalisation protest on London's streets, the demonstrators' previous loathing of George Bush rapidly transferred to the commanders of the ailing world economy."

[SemiCharmedQuark]

3. LOL. CNN to Zakaria: "Are you just plugging your book?"

CNN: Are you just plugging your book?

Zakaria: Well, that was the argument of the book I wrote last year -- "The Post-American World" -- but what I had outlined is coming true. The evidence for this just keeps piling up.

[Aloha Spirit]

6. Yeah, that was brutal! nt

[Cha]

5. That is so nice to read something

that doesn't have an agenda..Mahalo, Aloha Spirit.

"It is not lost on Europeans that, almost immediately, the new administration signaled an end to what many here saw as egregious differences. Obama is closing Guantánamo, seizing initiatives on the economy, and moving on the Kyoto climate-change protocols through energy chief Stephen Chu, who is widely respected here. One comment repeated by opinion leaders here is the "calm" that Obama exhibits, given his challenges."

[Aloha Spirit]

9. Aw, yr welcome Cha! I agree. I call it the pundit bubble.

Side effect of mega-legendary two-year-long presidential campaign.
Lots of pundits trained to make up their own news.
I like that Obama addressed that at one of the European press conferences, about journalists seeking out and magnifying controversy.. I can't find the quote though.

[Cha]

12. I hope that before this is over that

Obama gets us a new "media" that isn't about manufacturing and manipulating..afterall they brought us 8 years of bush and the war on Iraq.

"I like that Obama addressed that at one of the European press conferences, about journalists seeking out and magnifying controversy.. I can't find the quote though."

[and-justice-for-all]

10. I'm starting to hear comparisions to Princess Di...nt

[TayTay]

13. Zakaria should have gone back and read some more of Freedland's stuff

Yes, on April 1st, The Guardian writer Jonathan Freedland did http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/01/barack-obama-g20">write this:

Someone tore up the script. Here's how it was meant to go. Barack Obama was supposed to sweep into Europe on his first major trip abroad as the new JFK, greeted by adoring fans moistly waving little American flags. His progress would be part celebrity world tour, part celebration of the end of the Bush era. A needy Gordon Brown would bask in the Obama glow, hoping its rays would improve his own deathly pallor. Meanwhile, the rest of Europe's leaders would fall to their knees, humbly agreeing to any request made by the visiting emperor, mindful that in a choice between them and Obama, their own electorates would choose Obama every time.

That was the way it was supposed to be. Instead, Obama arrived last night on the eve of what organisers promise will be a raucous day of anti-globalisation protest on London's streets, the demonstrators' previous loathing of George Bush rapidly transferred to the commanders of the ailing world economy. Brown will still crave the Obama magic dust, but he may find his American visitor has less of it to sprinkle around, beleaguered as he is by rising opposition from both left and right at home, even the first muttered grumbles that the 44th president might turn out to be neither a new FDR nor a JFK, but a JEC - Jimmy Carter. To cap it all, the Europeans are refusing to bow down before him.

That purplish prose indicated that expectations were actually rather low for President Obama's visit. Yet perhaps Fareed Zacharia spoke or wrote too soon. This is an except from a colum Jonathan Freedland http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/04/obama-strasbourg-nato-nuclear">wrote for the Guardian for 4/4/09:

The jokes about Barack Obama as saviour and messiah are wearing a little thin now. But yesterday he signalled that even if he cannot save the world he is deadly serious about changing it. By telling a town-hall-style meeting in Strasbourg that he wants "a world without nuclear weapons" - a theme he will develop in a major address on proliferation to be delivered in Prague tomorrow - he stunned much of the usually sceptical diplomatic fraternity.

Not because the statement was entirely new: Obama said the same thing as a candidate, including before a vast crowd in Berlin last July. But candidates say lots of things. Few believed that Obama, once elected, would seriously try to pursue such an idealistic, even utopian ambition.

Yet on this first trip overseas, and despite all the multiple pressures on him at home, the new president has given every indication he means business.

SNIP

So he admitted that the US had not got everything its own way at the London summit, adding that that was how it should be in the 21st century. "If there's just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that's an easier negotiation," the president said. "But that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be the world that we live in."

Instead he referred to the US as a "peer" of its fellow G20 members, bowing to French and German demands for tighter regulation of international finance. On that last point, he reportedly acted as a conciliator, cooling down a simmering dispute over tax havens between the presidents of France and China, taking each of them to one side, in the corner of the negotiating room.

It is hard to imagine that role - of US as honest broker and umpire - being played by Obama's predecessor.

Maybe it's me, but that sounds like praise to my ears.

[Aloha Spirit]

14. Wow, that's quite a turnaround, from a beleaguered Jimmy Carter to an honest broker and umpire!

Thanks for posting that....Let's see who in the press refuses to acknowledge the tide of change that just hit Europe!

[genna]

16. Am I the last living Democrat who embraced Jimmy Carter's idealism?

The initial Middle East between Israel and Egypt was not too shabby.

[Adelante]

17. You are not alone

:hi:

[Aloha Spirit]

15. update: F. Zakaria/CNN changed the title of his piece to "Obama Critics have it wrong" from, if I

remember right, something like "Obama a disappointment overseas".

But, the interview text is the same, and embarrassing, seeing as the consensus on Obama's performance changed rather quickly.