From: Elizabeth
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 12:36 PM
To: Joel; Ariella
Subject: Hi from in front of the Victory Column
I'm standing somewhere in between the Victory Column and Brandenburg gate waiting for Obama to speak. Yesterday we went to the Foreign Ministry and met with the Deputy Director of Culture and Media Relations. I asked him several questions about Germany's trade with Iran, and about what Iran says when Germany questions them about Holocause denial. He prefaced it by saying he is not an expert on the issue and is not giving the official German position. He said they have to trade with Iran, because of oil, and stressed that Chancellor Merkel stands strongly with Israel against the Iranian threat. He said the same thing as the member of the German government who works in transatlantic relations said about Holocaust denial - that Iran sees Israel as a part of history that they disagree with Germany about. I still can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone when I ask specifically if in light of all that Germany has done following the Holocaust how they can allow Iran to deny it. This is a serious contradiction to me. Later in the day we visited the AJC office and I asked the Director about it and she said despite the stats, trade with Iran is going down.
I just got asked by a few people in the group if I was writing a short novel, so I should go. Hope all is well in NY.
Elizabeth M. Foreman
-----Original Message-----
From: Ariella
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:14 PM
To: Elizabeth; Joel
Subject: RE: Hi from in front of the Victory Column
Thanks for the report, Liz. Sounds similar to my experience with the diplomats, even though you met somebody else. Here's a related article published in today's New Republic:
Short-Term Relationship
by Josef Joffe
Right now, Europeans are greeting Barack Obama as their savior. But how long will the love last if he wins the presidency?
Post Date Thursday, July 24, 2008
This author, a so-called expert on Europe and trans-Atlantic relations, has had more hits from big-time U.S. media in the last five days than in the last five years: Newsweek, CNN, NPR, Lehrer, Reuters, even Al-Jazeera English. They all wanted me to explain Germany's Obama fervor, of course, particularly as it related to his speech in the heart of Berlin, at the "Victory Column" that celebrates the military triumphs that launched Bismarck's Prussia-Germany on the road to Continental primacy.
The site selection is a nice touch for a man who is regarded throughout Germany as the Prince of Peace, as the polar opposite of the one-man axis of evil that George W. Bush is said to be. But what Barack Obama really is or isn't does not matter. Obamania is not about politics, but about desire, dreams, and projections. Obama is not so much a candidate as a canvas, a vast surface onto which Europeans (and half of the U.S. electorate) can paint their fondest fantasies. There hasn't been anything like it in Western politics since ... since ... Jack ("Ich bin ein Berliner") Kennedy, the president Barack Obama so self-consciously mimics, down to the tilt of his head and the inflection of his voice.
If he ran in Germany, Obama would carry the country by a landslide, with 67 percent of the vote. But there is no gold in them thar numbers, only disappointment. By vast margins, Germans and Europeans believe in Obama as the Savior & Redeemer who will deliver them from the last eight years of George W. It's like an exorcist fantasy: Once we can send Bush off into the desert, like the scapegoat of the Israelites, we will be able to love America again.
There are two problems buried in this fantasy. One, Barack Obama is possessed of a pliable identity that oscillates between Barry and Barack, between White and Black, between the Harvard Law Review and the Chicago slums, between a leftish voting record in the Senate and a right-of-center message on the stump. He is neither saint nor softie, but the most consummate power politician to come out of Chicago since Richard Daley the Elder. Following classical electoral ritual in the U.S., Obama has been moving steadily to the right, be it on the death penalty, gun control, or Iraq. Europeans haven't quite processed his pilgrimage to the center, and if they have, they seem not to care.
"He is a universal icon," gushes Ijoma Mangold, a commentator for Munich's Süddeutsche Zeitung, the country's largest quality daily. Obama's "greatest talent," he says, "is to have turned his person into a grand narrative many would like to make their own."
The Washington correspondent of another major left-of-center publication puts it in more practical terms: "Obama recognizes the limits of American power and influence. ... The weight of the White House (in world affairs) is waning. ... In this multipolar world not all the roads will lead through Washington." For the new president (and there is no doubt in Europe that it will be Obama), this means "more cooperation, more UN, NATO, and EU."
This, of course, is Europe's favorite dream: a post-Bush America cut down to size and chastened, a meeker and more modest America, a more "European" (that is, a more social-democratic) America, which at last casts off some of its nastier capitalist habits. An America that is a lot more like us Europeans who have forgone power politics and sovereignty in favor of communitarian politics and integration.
This is the canvas Europeans have been painting with wildly enthusiastic brush strokes. If Obama wins, the reality will be different. Sure, President Obama would speak more softly than did Mr. Bush in his first term, but he would still be carrying the biggest stick on earth. He will preside over an America that is still No. 1 and not part of a multipolar chorus populated by Russia, China, India, and the E.U.
Germans should have read the foreign-policy chapter in Obama's The Audacity of Hope. There are passages in there which read like pure Bush--on unilateralist action, on the right of pre-emption, on playing the world's "sheriff." Obama's upshot: "This will not change--nor should it." This doesn't mean more Bushism if Obama is elected. But it is a useful reminder that the U.S. plays in a league of its own--with global interest, with global military means, and with the willingness to use them.
In Berlin, hundreds of thousands will cheer a projection rather than a flesh-and-blood Obama on Thursday. After Inauguration Day, alas, Europe and the world will not face a Dreamworks president, but the leader of a superpower. Whether McCain or Obama, the 44th president will speak more nicely than did W. in his first term. He will also pay more attention to the "decent opinions of mankind." But he will still preside over the world's largest military, economic, and cultural power.
This vast power differential is what Germans and Europeans don't quite fathom in their infatuation with Obama. Their problem was not Mr. Bush, but Mr. Big--America as Behemoth Among the Nations, unwilling to succumb to the dictates of goodness that animate post-heroic, post-imperial, and post-sovereign Europe.
Josef Joffe is publisher-editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, as well as a fellow of the Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford.
Ariella
----- Original Message -----
From: Joel
To: Ariella; Elizabeth
Sent: Thu Jul 24 13:33:48 2008
Subject: RE: Hi from in front of the Victory Column
Liz,
Great to get a first-hand correspondent's report, even before it is posted on a blog! Thanks for sharing this interesting information.
I find Josef Joffe's piece very interesting, and precisely what I would have expected from him.
I look forward to more news from you.
Joel
----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth
To: Joel; Ariella
Sent: Fri Jul 25 04:48:31 2008
Subject: Re: Hi from in front of the Victory Column
Excellent article. It seemed like a lot of the people in the crowd were slightly euphoric about Obama. He was 15 minutes late and at one point they started clapping in a chanting type fashion. We had a pre-scheduled dinner with some young Germans later that night and I had a really interesting conversation with a German guy in his late 20s. He said that he is sure that without a doubt Obama will win by a lot. I've heard others say that since I've been here. I of course mentioned that much of the middle of the country, those who elected GWB may not vote for Obama. This guy is a journalist and very attuned to politics - he wanted to go because his father heard JFK speak when he came to Berlin in the 60s. He liked that Obama spoke with a lot of "large words," to use his terminology. Essentially he liked the esoteric side of Obama. Another German at dinner said that Germans are so into Obama and so sure he is going to win because they only show him and not McCain on TV in Germany.
I do have to say I was very moved by the parallels he drew with US freedom and the references to the Berlin wall, especially with everything I have learned and experienced since being here. It truly is fate that we were here at this time!
On another note, the German guy I mentioned above, Martin, told me a really crazy story I thought you'd like to hear:
One day he was hiking in Saxony with a friend and they encountered some Neo-Nazis. Apparently Neo-Nazis in Germany are quite similar to their counterparts in America in that they come from small insolated towns where there are no jobs. These particular Neo-Nazis were in a bar. They next day Martin put on his tefillin right in front of them. He said that if the Neo-Nazis knew that there a Jew in their midst, they may be trouble. However, he knew they were too stupid to know what he was doing.
We are on our way to Potsdam now. Shabbat shalom!
Elizabeth M. Foreman
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