Obama's Berlin Speech--A Bloggerama
by Damozel | One quibble: If I were running his campaign, I wouldn't have described it at the website as his 'historic speech.' How the hell can the campaign say it's 'historic' yet? (Unprecedented, maybe.) Don't they listen? Aren't they paying attention to the mutterings about arrogance, hubris, etc.? Dial it back, Obama campaign! Let his supporters say this.
Still, it's a good enough speech [see transcript and comments below]. I just think he should have lightened the tone by proclaiming right at the start 'I speak to you...as a citizen...and as a jelly doughnut.' (Note that the linked article claims that Kennedy never said this; if not, there goes my favorite political blooper of all times). See Obama's speech:
Here are some reactions so far:.
SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars:
Senator Obama delivered a soaring speech today in Berlin before an estimated crowd of over 200,000 in which he called for a renewed trans-Atlantic — indeed, trans-global — alliance to fight the common threats we all face. Appealing the ideals America was founded on and has tried to promote since it’s inception, Senator Obama stated that whether it’s terrorism and global warming, or genocide and disease, there is no problem we cannot overcome nor enemy we cannot defeat when we are united in common purpose. Watch a few of his remarks below.
The Local (German News in English)
The audacious speech took the White House race out of US borders in a way never seen before, and was designed to portray Obama as a leader with unique global appeal....
"It was a good speech, nicely geared to an international audience," American Berlin resident Michael Goodhart, 38, told The Local after the event. "It's impressive that he can draw such a crowd here," he said. "Obama represents such a stark change - in his age, look and policies."
Gerhard Sporl at Spiegel Online: 'No. 44 Has Spoken' (See, Obama campaign? Let...other...people...say...it)
Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.
It was a ton to absorb -- and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America's errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It's amazing one could even pack such a potpourri of issues into sentences and then succeed in squeezing them all into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes...
George W. Bush is yesterday, the Texas version of the arrogant world power. Obama is all about today: the "everybody really just wants to be brothers and save the world" utopia. As for us, we who sometimes admire and sometimes curse this somewhat anemic, pragmatic democracy, we will have to quickly get used to Barack Obama, the new leader of a lofty democracy that loves those big nice words -- words that warm our hearts and alarm our minds.
Rhetorically, I thought it was one of the better speeches of the campaign--the exact right combination of love for America and plea for international cooperation. The closing riff was, not surprisingly, the high-point....The framing of America and Europe's shared mission in the war on terror was also extremely deft....The idea of the war on terror as an ideological and existential struggle, a la the Cold War, is a common theme among conservatives (particularly neoconservatives). But somehow it seemed like a perfectly natural Obama-esque theme today, with his emphasis on our shared interest in winning. Suddenly the war on terror was the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, not Star Wars and the Minuteman Missile.
Scheiber did have some issues with 'atmospherics,' which I guess means the staging. Some interesting points about that if you click on the link.
At the Caucus, Katherine O. Seelye made an interesting point:
One unusual thing about this speech: Can anyone recall another time when an American who is not president has gone overseas and asked another country for its troops? This strikes us as highly unusual. Here’s what Mr. Obama said: “The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation.”
Taylor Marsh says:
Like it or not, the Obama team has raised the bar with this speech at this setting, especially coming after a week that candidates dream about. For some checking in it could be their first impression; for others another look at a man trying to make history by grabbing a bit of the past and bringing it into the future as comparison. We'll see how it plays and if the media writes a real review or decides to get even for Obama's... er... audacity.
Jake Tapper at Political Punch points out that the speech was followed by an appeal to donors.
Shortly after 6 pm Central time -- just a few hours after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, gave his speech in Berlin, which his campaign insisted was not political -- his campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent out a fundraising solicitation using the speech to raise campaign cash....
Yep, I got one. But I get one every other day. The speech was another excuse to ask for donations---they're always asking. I think it's absurd to imply this was the motive for the trip. It's more that Plouffe & Co. hoped we'd be whipped up enough to give. (Not till Hillary's campaign debt is retired, guys). Tapper says:
This is certainly going to be used as ammunition for those critics who wondered about the true purpose of this "non political" trip.
Ann Althouse says --- pretty lamely---:
I guess we're not supposed to think about how Obama wanted and still wants to give up on the Iraq war. Surely, if he'd been there in 1948, he would have said the Berlin airlift is hopeless. He thought the surge was hopeless.....
I think he thought it wasn't the best investment of our resources or our highest priority (after all: Afghanistan.). I am not sure that enough time has passed to prove him wrong. But, whatever. If he were actually all that right wingers claim he thinks he is, and really did resurrect the dead, they'd still be all, 'Hmph! But he thought the surge was hopeless.'
Here's her summary of the speech:
I'll summarize: Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another, right now.
Like that's a bad thing.
Jim Geraghty at National Review Online (praising it with unfaint damns, yet praising it) has a similar 'shorter version':
There was not a ton to object to, and indeed a lot to like, in Obama's speech in Berlin. Although I think I preferred it the first time I heard it, when it was sung by all those celebrities and rock stars back in the mid-80s.
Oh, wait, that was "We Are The World."
The Carpetbagger Report, on the other hand, takes it a bit over the top, according to me.
But he's still closer to the mark than Althouse or Geraghty. And I may be jaded. My profession brought me in contact with a lot of rhetoric. I didn't get that carried away, though I liked it. But Benen gushes:
Realistically, it’s not at all fair to keep expecting Barack Obama to deliver stirring, powerful addresses. And yet, he keeps managing to exceed expectations.....
Watching today, seeing Germans waving American flags and chanting, “Yes we can,” I thought about something Ezra Klein wrote in January: “Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it.”
Um...okay. Anyway, no wonder that the right-wingers are jealous. McCain isn't even on the same planet, never mind the ballpark.
Ari Berman at The Nation was also deeply stirred:
When George W. Bush talks about "freedom," Europe groans. When Barack Obama invokes the same word, Berlin cheers.
To much of the world, Bush's talk of freedom is code for messianism, arrogance and empire. Obama reframed the debate--and reclaimed the word--with his spectacular speech in Berlin today, when he spoke of "the dream of freedom" as something both Americans and Europeans shared and could be proud of.
DDay gets it just right, I think:
[T]he speech was very good...a message that weaved Obama's personal history, the kinship between the United States and Germany dating back to the Berlin Airlift, and how that kinship - a multilateral coming together of nations - can meet the challenges of this century and triumph over them....
This is a simple call for a foreign policy that respects allies and listens to the breadth of opinion; that moves forward with humility but with the common purpose to share wealth, reward work and stand on the side of restoring this planet's resources and protecting the human rights of all citizens; and that makes a profound call for the end of a world with nuclear weapons, which, incidentally, I don't remember ANY other Presidential candidate doing since the invention of the atomic bomb.
Yep, that's got the hallmark on it.
As does Cernig's keeping it in perspective and yet giving the speech its proper meed of praise:
I know I'm a born cynic - and Obama's "rhetoric versus action" gap still appears too much like Tony Blair's false song of hope for comfort to me - but there's stuff in there that is, amazingly, of top international statesman quality. I say amazingly because the world had almost forgotten what a true statesmanlike American voice could sound like these past eight years....Evoking JFK and Reagan on one day - that's some damn good speechifying.
OTHER POSTINGS
Obama Quest -- The Daily Show's Continuing Saga
A Landmark Day for Torture-Disclosure' (Updated)
Brandenburg Gate-gate & Obama's Sinister German-Language Flyers
Not Ignoring the Edwards Scandal....
McCain's Foreign Policy Cred Is Down the Latrine
John McCain's incredible shrinking path to victory in Iraq
The Daily Show on the Congressional Hearings: Let Us Relish This incredible Low Point in Democracy
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