In The Times of London, Gerard Baker, tongue only slightly in cheek, writes:"You have to go back to the Beatles' first U.S. tour to find a trans-Atlantic trip freighted with the same sort of pregnant excitement that attends the one Barack Obama is about to make ...
Does anyone see the potential for this trip to backfire. Not because Barack might say the wrong thing - this tour will be carefully crafted to avoid any potential for mistakes. But the image the tour presents - of Barack as full of himself, loved by Europe, or even the potential for mild resentment over the irrational exuberance focused upon him.
"Just like the Beatles, Mr. Obama is a prodigiously talented revolutionary, the tribune of a rising generation, whose evident talent is only slightly compromised by an unsettling precocity. He hasn't claimed to be more popular than Jesus yet, but looking at the latest opinion polls in secular Europe, it might just be plausible."Yes, they do appear to be going gaga over Barack in Europe, which could just make some Americans sick.
What else do you need to know? He's not George W. Bush. Rather, in the words of Anne Applebaum, writing from Berlin, he is "the most popular American since Elvis."
No comments:
Post a Comment