I’ve spent a good part of the afternoon watching, listening to, reading, digesting, and reviewing other responses to Obama’s speech in Berlin today. Not surprisingly, almost every commentator has reached a different conclusion, from “a stupendous ride” to “cliché[d], from “liberal internationalism” to “neoconservativsm with a human face.”
It was not his best speech, but it was a good one. And it was great to watch. I loved hearing an American stand before Europeans and express clearly and concisely the idea that American values are global values, and vice versa. I was thrilled to watch the crowd react so joyously. I was delighted to hear him challenge Europeans on issues ranging from xenophobia to Afghanistan. And after reading the text of the speech, I was pleased to see such a concrete expression of my own foreign policy views — what I would call either hard-headed internationalism or realistic globalism.
Someday, future historians may write that Obama’s speech marked the rebirth of good feelings between America and Europe, that it helped bring to an end to five-plus years of European anger towards and resentment of the United States. Perhaps Obama’s speech will be remembered as the moment when the sentiments of Jean Marie Colombani’s famous editorial in the September 13, 2001 issue of Le Monde (”Nous Sommes Tous Americains”) returned, albeit as “Heute sind wir alle Amerikaner.”
And yet this afternoon, my main emotion is disquiet. I find my hopes not nearly as strong as my fears. I know neither I nor the rest of the pundit class were Obama’s target audience. But the problem is, neither were the 200,000 Berliners who flocked to see him today. The people who really matter are the ones who will only see short clips of the speech on television, or who will only hear about it from their favorite talk radio mandarins: average Americans, most of whom not only haven’t been to Europe, but also have no desire to go there.
What scares me is that the Berlin speech hurt Obama far more than it helped him, and that since it was the last event of his trip, it will overshadow his very real triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq. As I’ve noted before, most Americans view Europeans with a mix of suspicion and resentment. There’s a reason that “cheese eating surrender monkeys” has become part of our popular lexicon. And I have to think that the recent precipitous fall of the dollar against the Euro hasn’t helped matters.
But what worries me the most is that as Obama wowed the world, John McCain was sitting pretty in Ohio. Since Obama left the States, McCain has grown increasingly bitter and nasty. And now, much like Hillary Clinton before him, he appears increasingly willing to appeal to the worst devils of our nature.
This is what his campaign had to say today in response to Obama’s speech:
While Barack Obama took a premature victory lap today in the heart of Berlin, proclaiming himself a ‘citizen of the world,’ John McCain continued to make his case to the American citizens who will decide this election. Barack Obama offered eloquent praise for this country, but the contrast is clear. John McCain has dedicated his life to serving, improving and protecting America. Barack Obama spent an afternoon talking about it.
In less than three weeks, John McCain has transformed himself from an international statesman to an angry white male. He has gone from desiring a debate on the issues to mounting a wholesale attack on Obama’s character. He sounds increasingly desperate, which I find odd, given that the national polls have him only two to six points behind and many battleground state polls have him gaining.
I’m beginning to wonder whether the right word isn’t desperate, but rather cunning.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that this turn began largely after Steve Schmidt took over as McCain’s chief strategist. Schmidt is a Rovian through and through; he believes that, as a Wall Street Journal profile of him put it recently, “a campaign needs one positive message about its own candidate, and one negative message about the opponent.” It’s becoming increasingly evident that for Schmidt (and by extension McCain), the combination that’s working best is McCain as a prototypical American hero and Obama as the “other.” It is, to paraphrase Rick Perlstein, straight out of Nixon’s “silent majority” playbook.
Just look at some of the moves we’ve seen since Obama clinched the nomination: a commercial that describes McCain as “The American President Americans have been waiting for;” online ads that place photos of Obama side-by-side with Castro and Ahmadinejad; statements from campaign surrogates (too numerous to link to) questioning Obama’s priorities and even his patriotism; and McCain himself, in a statement that more than one commentator called unprecedented in the recent political history, suggesting that Obama is willing to lose a war to win a campaign.
I keep hoping that this is a temporary manifestation of McCain’s legendary temper. I keep thinking that once McCain calms down about Maliki’s endorsement of the Obama timetable, we’ll see a return to the principled politician that so many Americans came to know and love.
But the more he and his campaign pursue this line of argument, the more I am convinced that this is the real McCain, and that the happy warrior of the Straight Talk Express is nothing but a myth.
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MONTAGNE: So, to move on to domestic questions, Steve Schmidt, who is running your campaign, has said something kind of simple and understandable. He said that a campaign needs one positive message about its candidate and then one good, strong negative message about the opponent. Your camp —
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