Next up in Germany: Obamapalooza

Yesterday, a Rasmussen Poll demonstrated that the majority of American’s are not buying the Obama Magical Mystery Tour.

“While Barack Obama has touted his travel to the Middle East and Europe this week as a “fact-finding” trip, 63% of Americans do not believe it makes the Democratic candidate any more qualified to be president.”

source:  http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/63_say_trip_does_not_make_obama_more_fit_to_be_president

I’ve been looking around in the foreign press for coverage of Obamapalooza.

This is from Germany’s Der Speigal

Initially Obama wanted to hold his speech at the Brandenburg Gate, but the proposal drew widespread criticism in Germany. Given its charged history, Chancellor Merkel said, through a spokesperson, she thought the choice had been “odd.” And even today, criticism continues about the hubris of holding a speech on such a grand scale when he hasn’t even been elected president yet.

“If a person who hasn’t even been nominated as the official candidate is allowed to hold an address like an elected president, then one has to ask the question: What’s going to happen if a truly elected president (like Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan demands the same?” Peter Ramsauer, the head of Bavaria’s Christian Social Union party, told the Schwäbische Zeitung newspaper. “Are we allowing Germany’s great sights to become stages for the American election?” He said he would have expected “better instincts on the part of Obama’s campaign managers.

Source:  http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,567804,00.html

There is also some discussion about Obama’s assertion that the European Allies are not doing enough in Afghanistan and the War Against Terror.  There’s some pretty good indications that while Germans like Obama, Merkel and the government of Germany aren’t that impressed.

A similar message appeared yesterday in An Open Letter To Barack Obama from the Israel National News.

Source:  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8126

Barack Hussein, why don’t you just go home? Your visit to Israel this week is not because you’re looking out for the wellbeing of Israel and the Jewish people. You’re coming to Israel looking for the Jewish vote; your goal is to
speak with the Jewish American voters through the press coverage of this tour to the holy land. You want them to think that you took the time off from your busy campaign to further peace in the Middle East. Your hope is that enough stupid Jews will misread the message and take it as an act of support for Israel.

Don’t use us or our land as a photo-op to transmit a twisted call for support to Jewish-American voters. You don’t fool us. We know who you and your friends are.

This is from the UK publication the Economist:

Source: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11750395

Foreigners would be wise to temper their Obamamania, if only to limit future disappointment

There are reasons for them to be more cautious. Marvellous orator and skilled electoral tactician though he may be, Mr Obama has not repealed the basic laws of politics. Most obviously, he may not win. Rasmussen, a pollster, rattled the Obama machine this week by showing the two candidates tied, and most other analysts agree that the bounce he enjoyed after seeing off Hillary Clinton has been small and short-lived. Mr Obama still definitely has the edge, but opinion at home diverges sharply from that in most of the rest of the world

Second, President Obama would not be answerable to the world that so adores him. A president is elected by America’s more ambivalent people, and is accountable only to them. And his powers are mightily constrained by Congress, which is even more immediately accountable to its electorate.

Finally, there are some disquieting signs of a tendency on Mr Obama’s part to tailor his message to whichever audience he is talking to. All politicians do this of course. But Mr Obama’s two-steps have become Astaire-like. For instance, in his primary battle with Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama laid out a timetable for a virtually complete withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months of taking office, specifying a rate of one to two brigades a month. Since starting to campaign in the general election, he has fudged this clear line: he committed to withdrawal again this week (see article), but he has also been careful to give himself wriggle-room on its pace. Similarly, he once talked of negotiating with the Iranian leadership without preconditions: now he talks of the need for “preparations”.

Both these alterations make sense, but many Europeans won’t like them. Other bits of pandering could be more costly.

It seems many Brits don’t trust the junior Senator and his ability to change message based on the target audience.

More telling is that other polls show that Obama is not getting a bounce from this trip AND he still has a huge portion of the democratic party that has yet to join his cause.   So far, the only fawning over Obama by a foreign leader has been that of the Jordanian Monarch.  Other leaders remain cautious and rightly so.  Most do not like being used as political props by the Obama propaganda Machine.

Something that has not come out in the U.S. media is this Saudi Cartoon showing both Obama and McCain in the pocket of Israel.   The ADL has condemned this as anti-Semitic and rightly so.  It seems there is some skepticism in all parts of the world.

Source:  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1005113.html

This cartoon was published in the Saudi newspapers Al-Watan and Arabnews last month.