An American idol in Germany

[Skybird]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...567148,00.html

Obama...

(...) will be in Berlin this Thursday, when Germans will hail him as a magician with the ability to transform a gloomy world into a brighter place. Never before has there been so much excitement in Germany over the visit of a presumed US presidential candidate. Obama may be running for the White House, but judging by the commotion, one would think that he had already advanced two steps further and were the president of the world.

Which is precisely the issue. Obama raises hopes that he will not just change America, but politics as a whole.

Obama is the hope of a Western world filled with concerns. A recession looms as does high inflation sparked by exploding demand for commodities and natural resources. Furthermore, no one has yet come up with a convincing response to global warming. No one knows how to bring peace to the Middle East, Afghanistan or Iraq. And no one has a promising strategy for dealing with Islamist terrorism.

At the same time, the West is searching for its place in an "incomplete world order," as journalist Peter Bender describes the current state of affairs. How strong will China, Russia and India become? How should the West interact with these countries? And is there even such a thing as the "West" anymore?

It is time for leadership. And only one man inspires the kind of confidence that would enable him to assume this leadership: Barack Obama.

Germans, in particular, are pinning their hopes on this man. Whereas just 10 percent favor the Republican candidate John McCain, fully 76 percent consider Barack Obama the better candidate.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel was also a candidate for the global presidency once. But by now it has become clear that she even has trouble leading her coalition government at home. Obama will be visiting a country that lacks leadership.

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In the end, though, despite the weeks of headlines the site search produced, it will be the content of Obama's speech to which political Berlin will pay the closest attention. Already, a divide is forming in Berlin's political circles over how to assess the candidate. Conservatives insist that the differences between Obama and the Republican candidate, Arizona Senator John McCain, are exaggerated. Perhaps the "honeymoon" will last a little longer with Obama, says Karl-Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg, a CSU foreign policy expert. But, Guttenberg adds, the "fracture point" will be reached no later than the NATO summit in the spring of 2009, when the new US president, be it Obama or McCain, outlines exactly how he envisions trans-Atlantic cooperation in the future -- and that will include US demands that Germany send more troops to embattled southern Afghanistan.

Most US experts at research institutions share this assessment. They warn of exaggerated expectations. They warn against discounting McCain and the experience he brings to the table. And they warn of Obama's lack of experience, speculating that the presidency could very well turn out to be a rude awakening for the Democratic candidate.

But foreign policy experts in the SPD, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Green Party refuse to be deterred by such rhetoric. With Obama as president, Germans and Americans could finally "talk about shared values once again," says FDP foreign policy expert Werner Hoyer. Green Party politician and former Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin is hoping for a "true new beginning," and former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer agrees: "With McCain, one has a pretty good idea of what to expect." Fischer believes that McCain, unlike Obama, would not bring about any significant change as president. For Fischer, Obama could "fail, possibly even in a big way, but he could also turn out to be one of the truly great American presidents." Foreign Minister Steinmeier hopes that the Democratic senator, should he become president, will promote a "new, open foreign policy."

Such are the expectations in Germany, despite the fact that Germans still have an unclear picture of the candidate. Every word he utters about foreign policy is eagerly absorbed and interpreted -- like the keynote address Obama gave in Washington last Tuesday. It was a smart speech, strong on content, and for the first time he sounded more like a president than a presidential candidate. If the words he uttered in a windowless conference room at the Reagan Building in Washington D.C. become reality, the trans-Atlantic relationship faces an exciting and possibly even turbulent time ahead.

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Just how Obama feels about the Europeans becomes clear from chatting with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security advisor under former President Jimmy Carter and a current advisor to the Obama campaign. Brzezinski's language is peppered with the kinds of words that will likely be heard more often in the future: partnership, responsibility, sharing burdens. "I think the Europeans have to decide whether they want to be a global power or not," says Brzezinski. Should they decide they do, Brzezinski's message continues, they will be called upon to assume their fair share of the decision-making process, responsibility and the financial burden.

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John Kornblum, the former US ambassador to Germany, has an appealing theory to explain why the relationship between sister nations is so complicated. Today's Americans, says Kornblum, are the descendants of Europeans who couldn't abide life in Europe, and who wanted something more radical and therefore emigrated. For this reason, Kornblum believes, it is wrong to expect similarities. America is, in a sense, an anti-Europe.

The situation is somewhat more complicated in Germany, because the Germans have the Americans to thank for so much: liberation from the Nazis, a functioning democracy and the basis of their prosperity.

Attention to everything American is enormous in Germany. Hardly any other nation in Old Europe is as thoroughly Americanized. The Germans are almost indistinguishable from the Americans when it comes to eating, drinking and watching television, but they never miss an opportunity to reassure themselves of just how superior they are to their relatives across the Atlantic.
Germans, in their own assessment, are not as materialistic as Americans, have more depth and culture, better washing machines and -- it goes without saying -- better cars. When there is a blackout on the American East Coast, it makes headlines on Germany's evening news. Look at those Americans, the Germans are then quick to point out, they want to rule the world and yet they can't even keep the lights on.

In this respect, George W. Bush was a godsend for Germans and their complex inventory of emotions. Never before had they been able to complain so openly about the Americans' hubris and arrogance and then feel so vindicated afterwards. Texan Bush embodies everything the Germans criticize about America: the small-minded and swaggering demeanor of a Southerner.

Obama is far closer to the Germans. In fact, he seems almost European: not some Texas cowboy, but a Harvard graduate from an urban environment, and not a "straight shooter" but a man who emphasizes dialogue and mutual understanding.

But even if Obama replaces Bush, America will still be America. The United States is still the military superpower, and yet the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the limits of its superiority for the entire world to see. The United States is still the world's largest and most important democracy, and yet several countries, especially Russia and China, are doing their best to replace democracy as a forward-looking model of government.

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Steinmeier believes that it is important for the nations of the West to stick together, especially if the rise of emerging economies leads to a realignment of the world map. To this end, Steinmeier warns, the West must take a pragmatic and cautious approach to defining common interests. "The attempt to reshape the West without the rest of the world would leave us with a world without the West."

Steinmeier's predecessor, Joschka Fischer, disagrees. After the Iraq war, he argued for a "reconstruction of the West." According to Kornblum, who shares Fischer's view, Europe and North America form a community of values and are thus natural allies. Germany, says Kornblum, could never achieve the same level of commonality with Russia or China. In fact, Kornblum envisions a partnership so close that relations between countries of the West would not be a matter of foreign policy, but of a "trans-Atlantic domestic policy."

For Germany, it will be tougher to resist American claims for leadership with a president Obama than with a president Mccain. McCain does not enjoy as much disgust, ridicule and antipathy than Bush, but he surely is not any popular over here.

In a reverse view this means that if it is in other nations like in Germany, America may be better off in foreing politics with Obama as president, instead of McCain, for it will be harder for these other nations to reject Obama's demands than Mccain's.

Even if both men as presidents I would expect to have very much the same claims.