A lot has been made about Obama being greeted to supposedly rapturous audiences in Europe (as described by obviously love-struck journalists amazed that a US President actually sounds coherent, and about his desire to listen to allies, as opposed to dictating them around:
“In essence, President Obama managed to identify himself with a form of American statesmanship that recognises the difference between being a leader and being a boss.”
Having listened to Obama's speech in Strasbourg (which you can watch in full here), there's a lot that can be said about how he seems to "get" a lot of the issues of the day (see this good summary by Crazy Horse), but I wonder if he will have noted the none-too subtle messages sent by the public in the course of his speech, in the form of silence or applause for bits of his speech:
- he thanked his hosts, President Sarkozy and (socialist) mayor of Strasbourg Roland Ries. Sarkozy's name was met with a cold silence, whereas Ries's name was wildly applauded. First message: our leaders don't necessarily speak for us. They tend to be a lot more supportive of US goals than the general population;
- he had nice words about Strasbourg, as a symbol of European peace and reconciliation. But he then went on to insist on how NATO was similarly important, on how the mission in Afghanistan was vital to European interests. His ode to Europe was greeted with massive applause, while his invocation of NATO and terrorist threats to Europe was met with stony silence. Europeans are deemply skeptical of military force and proud of its peaceful, if bumbling, way of solving conflicts by talking them to death (pun intended). Again, our leaders support for the Afghan adventure is not shared by the population;
- he has a few words about US being arrogant and dismissive of Europe, followed by a (much longer) tirage about "insidious" European anti-Americanism, clearly equating the two. His conclusion, that "America cannot reach its goals alone, but Europe cannot reach its without America" was similarly assymetrical and was greeted with more silence;
- what did get sustained applause was his words about closing Guantanamo, stopping torture, restarting negotiations with Russia to bring an end to nuclear weapons, bringing down the bankers and ushering back "a new era of responsibility." He did get applause for stating that climate change had to be tackled as a priority (although it was a lot less enthusiastic than it could have been because he talked about "protecting God's creation", a formula that visibly did not go well).
Altogether, the message was "it's nice to see America with a leader who's no longer an immediate danger to the planet, and who's obviously smart and emphatic, but that does not mean that we'll agree with everything he brings forward." I hope that the second part of that will not be ignored. America's president no longer being completely hubristic does not imply that he's always right, or that opinions coming from Europe can now be safely ignored or dismissed as "insidous anti-Americanism."