History doesn't really repeat itself--although historians damn sure do--but the gigantic, stupendous, super-colossal Obamaganza speech to some 200,000+ eager, excited (especially for Germans) Berliners reminds me of what Woodrow Wilson thought was his triumphal tour of Europe prior to the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. Wilson saw the thunderously enthusiastic reception he received everywhere he went as evidence that our allies were totally on board with his "peace-without-victory" plan for a non-punitive settlement with Germany. In reality, the throngs cheering Wilson were showing their appreciation to the American leader who had, albeit belatedly, brought his nation into the conflict and thereby facilitated the Allied victory that put their leaders in a position to stomp the living hell out of Germany at the upcoming peace conference. This they did, by the way, much to the dismay of Wilson, who, although he had been warned that he would be no match at Versailles for Britain's David Lloyd George and France's Georges Clemenceau, had nonetheless believed that what he interpreted as overwhelming popular support for his plan would force these wily, hardnosed diplomats to pretty much fall in line humming "Yankee Doodle."
If you haven't dozed off by now, perhaps you see one of the potential pitfalls of what Obama did in Berlin. To their credit, most of his listeners could probably translate practically every word he said, but that isn't quite the same as grasping the full meaning and import of what he said. Picking up on this, a writer for Der Spiegel
warned his almost giddy countrymen that their sweet-talking new American idol “is also certain to demand the help of the Germans, Brits and French in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's not going to let NATO shirk its duty -- and therein lie the perils of the engaging "we" and the catchy "Yes, we can." Otherwise all these hard-nosed Europeans will hope and pray that the future President Obama isn’t really all that serious about the saving the world of tomorrow, the polar caps, Darfur and the poppy harvest over in Afghanistan.”
If our reporter has read his people correctly, and I suspect he has, then, as in Wilson’s case, the response to this historic speech may not mean nearly as much as the Obama camp and the jubilant American media who covered it want to believe it does.
It’s hard to know how well how well Oby's version of the Brandenburg Concerto will actually play back here, but if I had to prophesy, I’d say his bounce in the polls will be modest at best. I’m guessing the people who are the most pleased with his performance are the ones who were already for him stronger than horseradish. Besides, I think the American people get a little nervous when our president appears too enamored of foreigners or they of him. This feeling is hardly peculiar to us, of course. Europeans, who seem to be far more cynical about their politicians than we are, are very skeptical when one of their leaders seems to go gah-gah over anything American. Curiously, a lot of Berliners who ate up Obama’s every word would doubtless have been a lot less excited if they had been watching their own Little Ms. Merkel addressing a comparably large and enthusiastic gathering over here.
Whatever Obama’s hang-ups, he is seldom accused of having an inferiority complex. His trip abroad shows that he not only preaches the “audacity of hope” but practices the audacity of…, well, audacity. Our man in Berlin observed that ol’ Oby “is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world,” but this Brit
really let fly with some clever and biting satire about the messianic cult that has grown up around “a Child [who]appeared in the wilderness” during “the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren.” Preaching the gospel of “Yes we can!” the young messiah first “smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic [Think of the thirty six hour warning in the Cialis ad] and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.” Then, “the Child ventured forth from Israel and Palestine” into “the land of Queen Angela of Merkel,” where vast multitudes gathered to hear his voice, and he preached to them at length.”
Sometimes such heavy-handed satire works better than the more subtle variety favored by the folks at the New Yorker who apparently thought that their thoroughly sophisticated readership would find amusement in a cover featuring a caricature of the lunatic right’s depiction of the Obamas as closet Muslims and, therefore, terrorists. Ironically, while the liberal pointy-heads objected to the cover as insensitive and insulting, the presumably ignorant and deranged crazies whom it was actually intended to insult couldn’t get enough of this confirmation, from a most unlikely source, of their perception of the Obamas as sinister and twisted agents of evil aiming to subvert American power and values. If you’re already shooting out gazillions of emails arguing that Oby is the Anti-Christ, given the imagery of the New Yorker cover plus the sight of him campaigning “to be president of the world” before a captivated audience of two hundred thousand exuberant foreign devils in Berlin, all you’re lacking is a photo of the “666” tattooed on his hiney.
If nothing else, the wacky New Yorker cover reminded us that these folks are still out there and probably not going away. Even if, as I fear, their ranks are actually growing, I doubt that, in and of themselves, they are capable of denying Obama the presidency. On the other hand there are clearly many other voters who harbor some very legitimate concerns about things like Oby’s lack of experience, his naivete', and his preference for vaporous catch-phrases over detailed policy positions. Sad to say it, but there are also folks who, regardless of what they tell pollsters, simply ain’t going to pull that lever for a black presidential candidate. Throw these three groups together and you have the explanation for why the object that refuses to recede in Oby’s rear-view mirror is someone who, while trying to convince Americans that he would be a president they could depend on, has thus far simply made them wonder if he could remember to put his “Depends” on.
If you believe this one’s “all over but the shoutin,’" you should keep in mind that shoutin’ determines the outcome of an election a lot more often than we’d like to admit, and there’s still more than three months’ worth of it left. Don’t tell this to our otherwise insightful German friend, however. He believes that “anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States.… For those who witnessed his appearance in Berlin, it is hard to imagine that John McCain has any chance.”
Anybody want to bet a six pack of Natural Lite that I can’t go back to Der Spiegel in 2000 and find a piece about what a butt-whuppin’ Ozone Al is going to put on “W.”?
...I didn’t think so.
