So Barack Obama had his Berlin moment today, and while it was neither “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” nor “Ich bin ein Berliner”, it was a landmark in its own way.
But since we’re 21st century digital short attention span types here at the Political Insider Journal, we just care how Obama’s Brandenburg-Gate-without-the-gate speech influences the U.S. Presidential race. As long as Obama seems to want to be President, or perhaps King, of the Western World this may be a bit parochial of us. But that’s just the way we are sometimes.
By now, most of our readers will have seen reporting on the parallel language in one of Obama’s domestic stumps and his Berlin oratory:
“America, this is our moment. This is our time” – Obama, in MN, June 3rd.
“People of Berlin — people of the world — this is our moment. This is our time” – Obama, in Berlin, July 24th.
To understand what this all might mean, let’s go to the numbers (from the early July CBS News/New York Times national poll)
- McCain had an 11 point edge (73% to 62%) in the percentage of voters who described each candidate as “very patriotic”.
- McCain had a huge edge (82% to 62%) in the percentage of voters who said each was likely to be an effective Commander-in-Chief.
- But, Obama trounced McCain by 48% to 18% as the candidate who will make the U.S. image in the world better.
Obama’s Eurotrip was always about maximizing his advantage on the third point. The risk was always that he would compound his problem in the first two points and play into the narrative that he is elitist, un-patriotic, and unready to protect America and our interests.
Only time will tell whether today’s exercise in rhetorical hubris was the sort of thing Democrats must have feared from this trip and Republicans have been eagerly awaiting. But since the blogs are alive with the sound of globalism, it must have at least some Obamites sweating a bit tonight. We would encourage them to stay positive…at least he didn’t give the speech in French.
