The Berlin Perspective: Obama in Berlin

While this post can just as easily be titled, "That One Guest Column That I Promised Seventeen Days Ago," I want to follow through with my promise of an on the ground perspective of the Obama speech in Berlin from earlier in July. So, without further ado, I give you that one guest column that I promised seventeen days ago.

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Much has been said about the impacts of Barack Obama’s July 24th speech in Berlin on the wider Presidential contest. In this post, I take a different tack, describing primarily the experience Obama’s appearance before the Siegessäule provided for me and the other people who were there. Along the way—especially toward the end—I offer my own nuggets of analysis, which are neither comprehensive nor necessarily shared by Franz, the owner of this blog, who kindly invited me to be his guest contributor.

In the weeks leading up to July 24th, political commentators like Roger Cohen and Matthew Yglesias worked me (and, I imagine, many other progressive Berlin-based English speakers) into a frenzy of anticipation over Obama’s upcoming appearance. But not until July 20th was the location of Obama’s speech confirmed. After much debate, particularly here in Berlin, over the appropriateness of a presidential candidate speaking before the Brandenburg Gate—previously the site of epic speeches by two actual U.S. presidents, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and the backdrop that the Obama campaign initially sought—it was announced that Obama would speak at the Siegessäule, or Victory Column. This selection was itself controversial: the Siegessäule was erected as a memorial to Prussia’s military victories over France and other countries that are now, in the words of conservative Bundestag member Andreas Schockenhoff, “[Germany’s] European friends and allies.” Like so many of Berlin’s other constructions, however, the Siegessäule’s significance has changed considerably over the years. Recently it has served as a focal point for the Christopher Street Day Parade and the Love Parade—a gay pride parade and a techno music festival, respectively.

On July 24th, the security staff hired for the event by Obama’s campaign began letting people into the gated central traffic circle surrounding the Siegessäule at 4 pm, three hours before Obama would begin. My colleague Thomas and I met at the Brandenburg Gate, about a third of a mile from the Siegessäule, at 4:40 pm, and proceeded through the Gate and along the Strasse des 17. Juni, taking in the sights as we went along—including the Reichstag, seat of the German legislature and site of the mysterious fire from which Hitler snatched power in 1933, and the Soviet War Memorial, a monument to the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who died in Berlin in the final months of World War II.

The atmosphere on the street grew festive as we approached the Siegessäule, in contrast with both the somber constructions we had passed before and the serious foreign policy address we expected to hear a few hours later. Young people, many of them Americans, registered American expatriates for absentee ballots and sold non-official Obama merchandise.

The beer, bratwurst, and ice cream stands that had lined the Strasse des 17. Juni during the UEFA European Championship earlier this summer were back, and doing brisk business. From inside the traffic circle, a German reggae artist named Patrice sang of love, peace, and his distaste for George W. Bush loud enough for all of Tiergarten to hear. Fun was a clear objective of the people who had come to see Obama’s speech and, of the people who had organized it.

As I stood in line to cross the security checkpoint into the traffic circle, drinking beer and joking with my colleague Thomas, I thought to myself about the three political rallies I had attended in the United States in recent years—Howard Dean at Michigan State University in the spring of 2004, John Edwards on the Diag of the University of Michigan later that fall, Obama himself at the Campus Progress National Conference in Washington in the summer of 2006—and about how little resemblance they all bore to the party unfolding around me in Berlin. Here, unlike at the mostly gray- and navy-colored gatherings I’d seen in Michigan and Washington, people were dressed casually, in shorts, sunglasses, t-shirts, and, in some cases, signs:

The sign reads “Obama for Kanzler.” “Kanzler” means “chancellor” in German.

The relaxed mood of the crowd at the Siegessäule that afternoon did not arise from any lack of interest in the speech to be delivered. The conversations I participated in and heard around me flitted, as most conversations do, from subject to subject, but returned with frequency to the matter Obama and what he would say. Would he ask for German military support for the campaign in Afghanistan? Would he devote any considerable length of air time to the matter of climate change? Would he turn to issues outside the umbrella of America’s foreign policy—domestic issues, like the collapse of the U.S. housing market, or the record number of Americans living without health insurance—or would his speech maintain a strictly international focus?

A few minutes before 7 pm, the conversations died down, and a slight but palpable hush fell over the crowd. At 7:05, the hush gave way to restless murmuring as a cohort of well-dressed people appeared on the stage beneath the Siegessäule. And at about 7:10, Barack Obama appeared from behind a red curtain near the base of the monument, striding confidently out to his podium.

Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

As his campaign staff had reiterated before the speech, and as Obama told the crowd first off, this was “not a campaign event”—though of course it was. My friend Priya put it well: Obama would not have spent large quantities of his campaign’s money on this highly publicized appearance in Berlin were he not the presumptive Democratic nominee. I completely agree with this assessment. I also understand the motive that drove Obama to call his event a non-event: he wanted dispel the claim that he’d rather preen before hundreds of thousands of foreigners than address the interests of Americans. What I don’t understand is this “preening” claim itself.

First, I find it patently ridiculous to suggest that a candidate for the presidency would seek to please non-voters in a foreign country to the exclusion of pleasing voters at home 100 days before an election.

Secondly, I don’t find it problematic for a presidential candidate to air himself before an international audience in the way that Obama did in Berlin. This wasn’t Obama “taking a premature victory lap,” as McCain’s staff claimed (click on the previous link to see the full quote). It was Obama assuring Americans and Germans alike that, as president, he would cooperate with and listen to other peoples—something that the current administration has repeatedly refused to do (on Iraq and on climate change, to name two of the most prominent examples), much to the detriment of America’s standing in the world. (And, indeed, to the detriment of its security and economic well-being.)

I wish more presidential candidates would take some campaign time to publicly air their international relations chops, as Obama did. In this utterly interdependent world, such displays of diplomatic ability give voters a crucial sense of how well a candidate will do his job (that is, serving the American people and their interests, including on the international stage), much in the way that test-driving a car on the highway gives the would-be buyer a sense of how well the car will do its job (that is, providing a safe, reliable, enjoyable ride, including at high speeds).

Following his introduction—which was greeted by the audience with a deafening round of applause—Obama launched into a ten-minute review of Germany’s post-war history, stopping periodically to call again for the sort international cooperation that marked the years of the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift. Here Obama’s courtship of the American voter became yet more apparent: as several Berliners pointed out to me after the speech, Germans are intimately familiar with their own postwar history, and Obama’s rehashing of it was of little value to them. These same Germans were appreciative, however, of the speech’s emphasis on international—and especially transatlantic—
cooperation, which Obama nailed home in a passionate, cadenced diatribe against walls:

Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Some I spoke with after the speech criticized Obama for being excessively vague and, particularly in the “walls” passage, for failing to discuss how he plans to bring down all these walls. I mostly agree with this assessment. Obama and his staff repeatedly assured the world that he was “not” in Germany to “campaign,” and laying forth detailed U.S. foreign policy prescriptions in Berlin would have opened this claim of theirs to some truly withering scrutiny.

All the same, when one considers the things Obama said in Berlin in the context of the policy goals he has outlined while campaigning in the U.S., it becomes clear that Obama had some very concrete steps in mind as he spoke beneath the Siegessäule, even if he didn’t enumerate these steps explicitly. Indeed, without going into numerical detail, Obama made clear to his Berlin audience that, as President, he would dramatically expand and improve the U.S.'s participation in the Kyoto Process; create a NATO-esque "global partnership to dismantle [terrorist] networks;" renew U.S. military and humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, while also doing his best to attract the support of Germany and other European countries for those efforts; get U.S. troops out of Iraq; step up the monitoring of nuclear weapons; and reform the international trade regime to make it "free and fair for all." All of these assurances corresponded clearly with platform stances Obama had taken in the past weeks and months, and one must simply go to his website to read detailed, target- and number-filled versions of these assurances.

Obama’s appearance in Berlin was the successful climax of an even more successful seven-nation tour. From Baghdad, where Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki agreed on the need for a timed withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, to Amman, Jordan, where Obama and an enamored King Abdullah hit it off while traveling together in the King’s own Mercedes, to Paris, where Nicolas Sarkozy stated that “France will be delighted” if Obama wins in November, the world welcomed and encouraged Obama with uncommon warmth. The reason for this warmth is partially summarized, I believe, by the inscription on a button I saw being sold by hawkers as Obama spoke:

Ich kann zuhören. I can listen. Eight years of a stubborn and ultimately destabilizing American foreign policy—a policy that once categorized the rest of the world’s leaders as either “with us or against us” in the war on terror, that scorned Europe’s input in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and that has been willing to negotiate with Iran only on conditions highly unfavorable to Iranians—has left the world thirsty for an American president willing to listen, consider, and cooperate, if not always to agree. For the 200,000 who cheered at the Siegessäule on July 24th, and for a roster of strategic allies in Iraq, Jordan, and France, Obama stands to be this president.

A t-shirt that speaks volumes.

The man himself.

Thomas, my colleague.

Christopher, a friend I met at the speech.
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Today's guest contributor, Chris, is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where he majored in political science and environmental science. Chris, one of ten American interns for the Transatlantic Renewable Energy Exchange, is currently living in Berlin, where he works for Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH.