Obama: How the speech is playing
Posted: Friday, July 25, 2008 9:11 AM by Mark Murray
The Washington Post: “Addressing a huge throng in the middle of this once-divided city, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Thursday implored Americans and Europeans to renew the partnership that once defeated communism to address 21st-century threats that he said put the security of all nations at risk.”
The Boston Globe: "The Illinois Democrat spoke before an early-evening crowd that police estimated at more than 200,000, larger than any he has mustered in the United States. The overseas gathering in the midst of a presidential campaign was seemingly without precedent in American history."
VIDEO: Newsweek's Richard Wolffe, who was in Berlin for Barack Obama's speech, discusses how well it was received in Germany and how the tone will likely be perceived at home.
The
New York Times: “The German police estimated that more than 200,000 people came to hear him speak from the base of the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, a sprawling park in the center of the city. Berliners waved American flags — provided by the campaign — throughout the address, offering precisely the visual message that Mr. Obama’s aides wanted to beam back home: a candidate who could restore the world’s faith in strong American leadership and idealism.”
The
New York Times also has this analysis: "Obama, Vague on Issues, Pleases Crowd in Europe."
Der Spiegel: "[A]n estimated 200,000-strong crowd finally got to see the candidate in the flesh. And it seemed as if the prominent guest wanted to make amends for the day's game of hide and seek. It was as if four different Obamas made an appearance at Berlin's Victory Column -- in the space of less than 30 minutes...
"It began with the soft and slow Obama. ... And then he elegantly turned to the theme of Berlin. ... And then suddenly we had Obama No. 2, the trans-Atlantic bridge builder. ... That was the night's carrot for the Europeans. But it was quickly followed by the soft stick, wielded by Obama No. 3: The crafty election campaigner. ...then he mentioned the demands people in Europe had been expecting from his speech... But what, precisely, was that supposed to mean? How many troops in Afghanistan? What kind of support for Iraq? And what will his new strategy against terrorists entail? ... So far Obama has provided scarce details --- and he has generated criticism in the US for not being more forthcoming with his ideas. Nevertheless, it could be that the trans-Atlantic relationship right now needs a new tenor more than it needs new political projects." Obama No. 4 (just to round it out): "The save-the-world orator who has packed his speeches at home with that kind of rhetoric. In the final minutes of his address, Obama called out to the audience: 'We must come together to save this planet.'"
The New York Daily News: "Obama's got the world in his hands; McCain looks flatfooted."
The New York Times’ David Brooks has totally fallen out of love (of course, that was bound to happen when McCain became the presumptive GOP nominee). "When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially American campaign. But now it is more than half a year on, and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more."
Here is more proof that part of Obama's guarantee of a great trip is that many folks he met decided they had to suck up to him. France's Sarkozy is one of those sucking up.
"If Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is worried that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is complicating the Bush administration's foreign policy with freelance campaign diplomacy, she isn't showing it. In her first public comments about Obama's overseas jaunt during which he has contrasted his international approach to that of President Bush in meetings with foreign officials, Rice said the trip was part of the election cycle and would not affect the administration.
"The McCain campaign appears resigned to the fact that Mr. Obama's foreign trip is dominating the political news this week and that the Illinois senator has thus far avoided the kind of game-changing gaffe that Republicans were hoping to exploit. Instead, Mr. McCain's aides are trying to feed a perception that Mr. Obama is overreaching as he tries to bolster his foreign policy bona fides and present himself as a credible world leader."
