Does Europe take Obama seriously?

Susan Neiman:

WITH gestures that ranged from a wink to a sneer, most anyone you met here this week volunteered the view that Barack Obama’s visit to Europe caused unprecedented frenzy. But it’s been hard for me to find a European, aside from two Harvard-educated friends in Paris, who confessed to excitement — not just about the visit, but the prospect of an Obama presidency.

It is true that Der Spiegel, the German newsweekly, featured Mr. Obama on its cover, topped by the words “Germany Meets the Superstar” — but the cover was satire, and nasty satire at that. The editors managed to find the ugliest photograph of Mr. Obama ever taken. It caught the senator at a moment that might be exhaustion but looks like conceited smirking. When Der Spiegel featured Mr. Obama on its cover in March, the cover line was “The Messiah Factor.” Must one add that this, too, was not meant to be taken at face value?

Europeans will be as relieved as 72 percent of Americans to see the end of the Bush administration, but their attitudes toward the Democratic candidate are far from being the same as the ones he arouses at home. Mr. Obama makes Europeans uncomfortable.

In Germany, politicians in front of large, shouting crowds evoke images that nobody wants to see repeated. But genuine worries about demagoguery are not all that’s at issue. The mocking undertone that accompanies most descriptions of Mr. Obama in the European news media signifies a trans-Atlantic divide. George W. Bush made matters far worse than they ever were, but the neoconservatives who advised him were right about one thing: Europe is gripped by a world-weariness that resists American dreams.

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There is much more. She presents a very different view from the hype of many in the media about his trip and the rock concert atmosphere. I suspect that even if they were enthralled it will fade quickly when reality sets in and a new President does not agree with their generally wimpy attitude toward evil.

Their anti Bush mania was as irrational as much of the anti Bush mania in this country has been. Bush has been a much better President than the media has been willing to credit. He has been right on the war and particularly on the need for the surge in Iraq. His "stubbornness" on that will pay dividends in the coming years unless someone like Obama is elected and squanders it.

On the economy too, his tax cuts have produced more prosperity than he is given credit for. For example, the two leading candidates for the Democrat ticket went from being virtually insolvent when Bush was elected in 2000 to multi millionaires by the time the 2008 campaign began. That could not have happened if the economy was as bad as they portray it.