 Barack Obama heads to Europe this weekend, and the Guardian reports on the almost unrealistic stakes, as set up by the U.S. media, and the European body politic:
It is unusual for a candidate to spend time overseas in an election year. US commentators this week have repeatedly used the phrase 'high stakes' to describe his trip saying he is running a risk taking time out from campaigning on domestic concerns, primarily job losses, collapsing house prices and rising fuel costs. "If Obama says he represents a new politics, he's certainly smashing an old paradigm by going," presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, of Rice university in Texas, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "And for 10 days, he'll own the media. It's gigantic for him." There has never been an overseas visit by a presidential candidate as oversubscribed as this one. His campaign team has rejected hundreds of requests not only from foreign journalists but from Americans too. He is taking a pared-down media pack, made up mainly of television crews. ... The main venue in Europe is not Britain but Germany, where he is to make a major speech on Thursday on transatlantic relations. He wants to deliver it in a picturesque location surrounded by hundreds, and preferably thousands of Germans, sending back a message to Americans that the US can be popular again after President George Bush. A German diplomat said today that Obama is extremely popular in his country. "They see him as a black JFK. Expectations are so high they would not be surprised to learn that he walked across the Atlantic rather than flew," he said.
Jesus ... I mean ... you know what I mean...
As I pointed out in an earlier post, the Obama trip is threatening to drive neocons insane. Someone will have to sedate poor Krauthammer when Barack gets to Germany.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Parker (didn't she used to write for the Washington Post?) whines about Obama being too serious (lifting that idea from Maureen Dowd...) and steals some of Krauthammer's ideas. Compare:
Parker today on NRO:
Obama’s self-deprecation was his most charming bit, but lately he is, well, less charming. He and his wife seem more like a finger-wagging principal and teacher tag team, with Michelle Obama promising that her husband will make us work harder when he becomes president. You get the feeling that should the Obamas take over, we’ll all be staying after school. They used to call that detention.
Krauthammer today for the WaPo:
His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism . . . that you come out of your isolation. . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed." In case you missed it, the new winger meme is: "Barack Obama is SO full of himself!" Watch for it, especially as his European crowds balloon. Oh, I'm going to enjoy this... there are going to be a lot of bald right wingers around here, and a whole lotta hair on the floor!
| Labels: 2008 election, Barack Obama, presidential candidates |
