Barack Obama addresses a crowd of 100,000 200,000 Germans, many of whom were waving American flags and chanting "Obama! Obama" and "Yes we can!" Whoops and even ululation went up when he mentioned that his father was from Kenya, and his address seemed very well received. Damn, the McCain folks, and the Bushies for that matter, have got to be boiling right about now. When was the last time an American besides Bill Clinton has pulled a warm crowd ANYWHERE in Europe? Sorry George and John...
In front of a crowd that Berlin police estimated to be as large as 100,000, Obama acknowledged differences between America and Europe, adding that "no doubt there will be differences in the future.
"But the burdens of global citizenship bind us together," he said, speaking under the central Berlin landmark of the Victory Column facing towards the Brandenburg Gate. Partnership among nations was not a choice but the only way to protect the security of Europe and the US, the Democratic Party presidential hopeful said.
Obama challenged a new generation of Americans and Europeans to tear down walls between estranged allies, races, and faiths in his soaring call for global unity.
"That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another," he said in reference to the Berlin Wall that divided the city from 1961 to 1989.
DW had previously reported on the Obama love fest in Deutscheland:
... Only around 13,000 Americans live in Berlin. So what is motivating Berliners and Germans in general to treat a Democratic presidential hopeful to such a royal welcome?
He's not Bush
In comparison to US elections, German political campaigns are short, stolid and sober affairs that focus as much on party platforms as personalities. In the wake of World War II, many Germans view charismatic leadership with mistrust.
That, however, doesn't mean that ordinary Germans or the media are immune to the aura of a politician who knows how to work a crowd.
The current edition of Germany's most serious news weekly, Der Spiegel, features Obama on its cover with the only vaguely ironic headline "Germany Meets the Superstar" -- a play on the title of the German version of the TV show "American Idol."
And many German bloggers do seem to idolize the Illinois senator.
"For me he already is the American president," wrote one user of a Website about Obama's Berlin visit. "He may not be have been elected, but he's the president in people's hearts."
Jeez. The Guardian's Oliver Burkeman had some pre-speech thoughts:
And so John McCain's dastardly scheme to snatch the presidency from Barack Obama's grasp using complicated reverse psychology techniques enters its final stages. First, you will recall, the Arizona senator challenged his rival to embark on a foreign fact-finding mission. Obama did so, falling straight into McCain's trap by committing several terrible gaffes such as having a really successful trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Then McCain may or may not have tried to seize the spotlight by using the conservative columnist Robert Novak to plant rumours that the Republican vice-presidential candidate would shortly be revealed -- which might have worked if Novak hadn't seized the spotlight himself by hitting a guy with his Corvette in downtown Washington. McCain also plotted to upstage Obama by giving a speech on an oil rig today, but that was cancelled due to storms that had been predicted for days. So, anyway, McCain's strategy is a little hard to follow, admittedly, but the upshot is that in Berlin shortly (7pm local time, 6pm London time, 1pm Washington time) Obama will speak in front of an adoring crowd predicted to number at least 100,000, generating adulatory media coverage in the US and abroad and burnishing his foreign-policy credentials -- exactly as McCain had planned all along. Join me here in half an hour or so for minute-by-minute coverage of Obama's inevitable humiliation.
Yes, but at least afterward he found a McCain guy:
(Sigh.)
And the McCainiacks have got to hate the headlines from Der Spiegel:
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"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
