Over 200,000 Hear Senator Obama in Berlin

What does it say about a politician when 200,000 people turn up to hear him speak? What does it say when 200,000 show up to hear him talk in a language not native to the city he’s in? What does it say about him when, of the 200,000, only a few tourists in town can even vote for him? Senator Barack Obama’s stop in Berlin yesterday was nothing short of astonishing.

According to German police estimates, over 200,000 turned up to hear the senator speak at the Siegesäule, or Victory Column, in Berlin's Tiergarten park yesterday. It was a wide ranging speech covering 60-years of Cold War and post-Cold War history. It touched on global warming, the wars in Central Asia, the need to secure nuclear weapons and eventually get rid of them, and much more. He didn’t bother with much detail; a speech like that isn’t the right place for ten-point plans. Above all, he didn’t try to say anything in German; there are too many trying to make him a Kennedy.

The speech itself wasn’t as good as his speech earlier this year on race, nor even as good as the speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention. However, this speech wasn’t designed to sway voters. This speech was designed to signal to Europeans (and mostly just their leaders) that, when the Bush years end, President Obama’s America is going to be a multi-lateralist nation dedicated to two-way communications. He wants a NATO and EU he can work with, and that means he needed to let them know that he was the anti-Bush. The crowd got it. They were waving American flags in Berlin during his speech, not burning them.

Gerhard Sporl, chief editor at Der Speigel’s foreign desk wrote right after the speech, “So what still sticks? That Barack Obama is a passionate politician who is fixated on and takes very seriously his desire for a bit of utopia and a better world. That he is an impressive speaker who knows how to casually draw his audience into his image of the world -- one who doesn't have any need to resort to the kind of cheap effects that tend to prompt the uproarious applause of an audience. That he is a typical American -- an idealist in the true spirit of the American success story who is now very casually making his claim to become something akin to the president of the world.”

Barack Obama is a typical American? Actually, he is, when seen from a European perspective. He carries around a goofy, smiling optimism that the world can be a better place and that nations can work together to solve problems -- like both President Roosevelts and Mr. Reagan. Europeans have lived a much different history, and they often find that Yankee naïveté amusing. Yesterday, the world was reminded of just how badly that quality has been missing in Washington, and however much they may smirk about it, Europeans rather like it in the American president.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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