Not So Humble
Posted on July 10th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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If Obama appears presumptuous and arrogant and not humble, there’s a good bet that we’ll see that reflected in the coverage back home.
Rather by definition, the proposal that he would speak at the Brandenburg Gate is presumptuous and arrogant, since it is a location usually reserved for addresses by heads of state during official visits on those occasions when it is used at all for political events. [Correction: I see that I was mistaken on this point, at least with regard to its uses by German politicians, but I think it still remains presumptuous for a foreign visiting politician to use it as his backdrop during an election season.] As I understand it, Merkel is not inclined to give him his photo-op. Besides, the logistical nightmare of shutting down the area around the Reichstag to host such a thing is probably not the sort of hassle that the Berlin city government and Merkel want to have. The absurdity of the proposal will probably save Obama from showing off his arrogance in front of the international press.
Update: The proposal is controversial within Germany and has created a rift within the coalition government. Maybe post-partisanship stops at the water’s edge? It has drawn this perfectly legitimate and correct statement from Merkel:
No German candidate for high office would even think of using the National Mall or Red Square in Moscow for a rally because it would not be seen as appropriate.
For that matter, no candidate from another country would usually think of doing this, because it would make little sense as a way to win votes back home. Just as a matter of political calculation, does Obama really want to send the message that he was able to give this speech at Brandenburg Gate because the Social Democrats allowed him to do it over the objections of the center-right Chancellor? Besides being, well, socialists, the SPD is associated in the minds of most Americans with Gerhard Schroeder to the extent that they think about it at all. Even if you believe, as I did at the time, that Schroeder was doing us a favour in speaking out against the invasion, he and his party are widely perceived as exploiters of “anti-Americanism.” While Schroeder is long gone and getting fat off of hefty Russian contracts, that distinction may be lost on audiences back home.
Second Update: Der Spiegel reports:
His strategists had hoped that Merkel would take the choice of Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate for the speech as a compliment.
Perhaps they also think that holding a rally at the Temple Mount when he visits Israel will be taken as a compliment by someone or other. These must be the same clever strategists who thought a foreign jaunt would help to strengthen his foreign policy credentials, rather than draw attention to his obvious lack thereof. At the very least, one hopes that these strategists will not be involved in running foreign policy in a future Obama administration. As Der Spiegel notes:
But the tumult in Berlin also underscores a bit of foreign policy naivité on the part of Obama’s travel planners. Merkel’s clear choice of words may be surprising, but it wouldn’t have been difficult to imagine that the German government would give a tepid response to his plan to hold a speech at such a highly symbolic historical location.
That’s exactly the image the campaign can’t afford to project. Then again, it was always likely to be the image that it projected on a European tour, considering that the candidate completely neglected holding hearings of his subcommittee on European affairs and hasn’t traveled much in Europe at all. How would he and his team know what how the Chancellor would respond? Actually, common sense might have worked.
Filed under: politics
The Chancellor may not be so inclined, but it will be the SPD mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit that has the final say, Unless Merkel wants to completely break protocol and deny Obama a visa (I have no reason to beleive that she will do something that boorish) the chances are better than average that the speech will go on. I can think of no better visual image the McCain camp would rather have than to have Obama being given a rock-star reception by non-Americans. I don’t think that Axelrod/Plouffe are completely high off of the fumes of their candidates’ awesomeness, but I’ve been wrong before.
It was a stupid idea. Berlin was the “frontline” in the Cold War. To do the equivalent today of what Kennedy and Reagan did you’d have to go to another part of the world.
Obama would only look small — like a man who has accomplished nothing in his life — if he were to deliver a speech in that setting now.
I thought Rove was out of line with his “country club” comment. Obama’s just not a country club guy. Still less is he the “kind of guy at London parties, trailing ash from a fashionable cigarette into the carpet and making snide remarks about someone ‘being an abominable bore.’” Like George W. Bush — or Bill Clinton — Karl Rove is yesterday’s man and his interventions in the campaign make one wince.
But there may be something to this “arrogant Obama” meme. Apparently, Obama was derisive in his book about the man who gave him his first “community organizer” job, and he dumped his first literary agent when offers for the reprinting of his book started coming in. Arrogance and manipulativeness may not be far of the mark in characterizing his behavior. So far Obama shows signs of coming to fill the image of the self-righteous “Obamessiah” the right has of him.
I don’t much care where Obama delivers his address in Germany. From Der Spiegel, it sounds like the Obama planners are flexible:
As for general comments about Obama’s purported arrogance working as a meme, it strikes me as odd that posters here would describe Obama as “apparently” derisive about someone in his autobiography.
Obama wasn’t in the least derisive in his book about that Chicago organizer. He was critical of a community organization model that was broken. Obama struggled with the broken model for a while and then came up with his own. And then Obama applied parts of this successful model to political campaigning. Good for him. This is competence, or brilliance even, not arrogance.
Read the book, have your own opinion based on actual knowledge. “Apparently derisive” doesn’t fly around here, unless, of course, you want stuff flying in the face of facts.
Obviously, Obama can do no right on this website, but I have to point out that while the host is excoriating Obama for the possibility of attracting as many as 200,000 to a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, this week the crack McCain team:
a) had no answer to a woman who wanted to know why McCain supported Viagra for men but not birth control for women,
b) continued to play up the threat of yet another disastrous war, this time with Iran
c) implied that the most popular program in the history of the American government — Social Security — is “an absolute disgrace” while at the same time revealing the candidate didn’t even understand it,
and d) heard his chief economic advisor — the self-satisfied Phil Gramm — tell voters that America is “a nation of whiners” in a “mental recession.”
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is alleged to be in terrible trouble, because it’s hugely popular overseas. Oh, okay then.
I call blunders as I see them, and I think this has been a blunder. That his campaign still doesn’t grasp that addressing a cheering throng of Europeans might not be the sort of image he wants to broadcast back home right now may be another blunder. Maybe I have it all wrong, and seeing crowds of Germans chanting “Yes, we can” auf Deutsch will persuade all those Missouri swing voters that he’s really the right candidate for them. Or, more likely, it will backfire. When Obama does something that I consider savvy or smart, I will make a note of it. June was not a good month for him, and July hasn’t been terribly impressive, either.
I would add that I have spent a good deal of time, and taken more than my share of grief, defending Obama and his advisors against charges that they are bad for Israel, anti-Semitic, “weak” on antiterrorism, un- or-anti-American and, of course, I denounced the efforts to smear him as a Muslim. I have not hyperventilated about his various pastors, and I think I have acknowledged his political and rhetorical skills often enough. If I don’t agree with him or give him much credit on anything else, I also reject what I consider to be unfair and false charges against him. What more anyone could reasonably expect from someone as far to the right as I am, I’m not sure.
Of course McCain and his campaign are jokes, of course McCain knows nothing about policy, and yes, he is a crazy warmonger. I have said that repeatedly before now, and I will be happy to keep saying it. I wrote a column months ago declaring McCain unfit for the Presidency–what more should I say?
I would have thought that Obama supporters would appreciate that I take their candidate seriously enough to spend time and energy talking about his campaign on a regular basis.
Also, if McCain and his campaign are jokes, shouldn’t it worry you that when he is pitted against the foolish old man your guy cannot pull away in either of daily tracking polls?
His goal I think was pretty transparent: look like JFK in Krautland.
paxr55: “Read the book, have your own opinion based on actual knowledge. ‘Apparently derisive’ doesn’t fly around here, unless, of course, you want stuff flying in the face of facts.”
I contribute what I can, like everyone else. I’m not doing this professionally and don’t have the time to nail down all the details.
I base my comments on Philip Weiss’s blog entry:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/07/obama-can-be-a-prick.html
I had posted here earlier to attack Rove’s comment. I still think he was out of line. Over time, though, I’ve started to wonder about the “arrogant Obama” notion, as apparently have Philip Weiss and others. I trusted Weiss’s perception as something more than the usual attack mounted against Obama, and thought I’d pass on what I’d read.
If someone else wants to check it out and carry the discussion forward, it would be appreciated. But I stand by my comment. I wasn’t simply trying to slam Obama. There are enough people on the Internet who will do that.
Maybe post-partisanship stops at the water’s edge?
Now, those words are the product of a sharp pen.