A Rosy Future for Anti-Americanism?
Lee on Sep 10 2008 at 2:51 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008
Longtime Clinton ally Leon Panetta pronounces Barack Obama “intimidated” by Sarah Palin, and lost in a deepening cycle of reactive defense. With McCain now winning a majority of independents and erasing the gender gap, the blood is most definitely in the water. It’s now a legitimate question to ask whether McCain can finish him off. My sense is that the Obama campaign isn’t too many more mistakes removed from a serious structural collapse in a significant segment of its support outside the Democratic ranks. Panetta is quite right, Obama needs to regain the initiative and fast.
On that matter Jonathan Freedland is pessimistic. So much so, that he is evidently consumed with stomach pains of grief. He warns us that the entire planet will seek revenge against the United States if we fail to appoint Obama president.
Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.
Of course I know that even to mention Obama’s support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the “candidate of Europe” and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today’s America, that the world’s esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.
(The Guardian)
While I always find it amusing when the Guardian gets threatening, Freedland is quite right in a meaningful way. For the most part, European opinion is fantastically misdirected for believing that its objections are with an unrepresentative “ruling elite” in the Bush administration. The United States is a profoundly democratic society and most characteristics they find so objectionable in the administration, are often actually reflective expressions of the popular character. Indeed, Europeans often misread the unpopularity of Bush. What Americans tend to hate about the Bush administration is its profound incompetence, rather than foundational characteristics such as a social conservative instinct, the martial spirit, or an idealization of free enterprise.
As for the legitimacy of Freedland’s advice…if the precondition for foreign consent is for foreigners to appoint our leadership, then I’ll welcome the most negative assessment possible from abroad. Alas, even if we did face such an unlikely choice, I’ve the sneaking suspicion that Jonathan’s prophesied retribution won’t extend much beyond similarly vague-but-threatening editorials in its practical effect.
After all, one of the most consistent and fundamental complaints of the European establishment against the United States, is our threat-making and insistence on tangible punishments for bad behavior from malpracticing states. It would be odd if the European insistence on the process of multilateral diplomatic engagement, inducement through trade incentives, and a consultative political discourse, should take a departure to exact real revenge on America alone.
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Why do these people think that a threat like that would work in their favor?
Did they learn nothing at all from the “write letters to people in Ohio” campaign?