{"id":1202,"date":"2012-07-25T08:03:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T08:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/25\/july-25-2008-barack-obama-and-berlin-what-we-should-and-can-be\/"},"modified":"2014-03-15T19:51:23","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T19:51:23","slug":"july-25-2008-barack-obama-and-berlin-what-we-should-and-can-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/25\/july-25-2008-barack-obama-and-berlin-what-we-should-and-can-be\/","title":{"rendered":"July 25, 2008: BARACK OBAMA and BERLIN: WHAT WE SHOULD and CAN BE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q-9ry38AhbU\" width=\"420\"><\/iframe>&#0160;<br \/>First I got this email from a young friend:&#0160; &quot;LOVED IT &#8211; Just brilliant and I am happy to vote again.&quot;&#0160; Then I watched The Speech again early this morning&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.c-spanarchives.org\/library\/index.php?main_page=product_video_info&amp;tID=5&amp;src=atom&amp;atom=todays_events.xml&amp;products_id=206535-1\">on C-SPAN<\/a>&#0160;and marveled at the reaction of 200,000 <a class=\"zem_slink\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=52.5005555556,13.3988888889&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=52.5005555556,13.3988888889 (Berlin)&amp;t=h\" rel=\"geolocation\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Berlin\">Berliners<\/a> in a city that has been, in recent years, a tough room for American leaders.&#0160; We&#39;ve spent<a href=\"http:\/\/dontgelyet.typepad.com\/dontgeltoosoon\/2007\/05\/it_was_almost_2.html\">a lot of time&#0160;<\/a>in Berlin, so I know the city; in my parents&#39; lifetime it was the capital of the&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Final_Solution\">most racist country&#0160;<\/a>in the world but now it&#39;s<a href=\"http:\/\/dontgelyet.typepad.com\/dontgeltoosoon\/2007\/05\/the_adventure_t.html\">&#0160;urbane, cerebral&#0160;<\/a>and pretty sophisticated, with a&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/dontgelyet.typepad.com\/dontgeltoosoon\/2007\/05\/way_back_in_eas.html\">stunning history&#0160;<\/a>and a development we&#39;ve watched throughout the last ten years that is unparalleled.&#0160; War(and communist)-ruined buildings and just plain ugly ones have finally been replaced by gleaming new market and skyscraper squares, there&#39;s fabulous mass transit as well as renewed activity in its two opera houses and many theaters and ballet companies.&#0160; OH and enough museums to keep you busy for months.&#0160; Just the kind of place to be particularly hostile to a president like George Bush.<\/p>\n<p>So what did <a class=\"zem_slink\" href=\"http:\/\/dontgelyet.typepad.com\/dontgeltoosoon\/2011\/01\/john-kennedy-barack-obama-2-inaugurations-and-2-generations-of-dreamers-redux.html\" rel=\"autointext\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers REDUX\">Senator Obama<\/a> bring that made the difference?&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/07\/25\/opinion\/25brooks.html?_r=1&amp;hp&amp;oref=slogin\">David Brooks<\/a>&#0160;was pretty harsh in the NYTimes:&#0160;&#0160;<em>&quot; Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn\u2019t eloquence. It\u2019s just Disney.&quot;&#0160;&#0160;<\/em>To be fair, I guess it can sound that way.&#0160; The reality, to me though, is that after eight years of a president of whom we could not be proud and whose policies, war, rhetoric and attitude shoved our allies far from our side, a bit of warmth and solidarity is a legitimate introduction.&#0160; Beyond that, the most profound thing about the speech, in my view, wasn&#39;t Obama but the response to him.&#0160; Sure, <a class=\"zem_slink\" href=\"http:\/\/dontgelyet.typepad.com\/dontgeltoosoon\/2011\/01\/john-kennedy-barack-obama-2-inaugurations-and-2-generations-of-dreamers-redux.html\" rel=\"autointext\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers REDUX\">Europe<\/a> is liberal and politically correct (except, often, about their own immigrants, unfortunately) and a black candidate (even half) for president in the US is attractive, but it&#39;s more than that.&#0160; It looked, at least to me, like Europeans have been longing for a United States they can believe in again; that perhaps part of the reason Europeans have been so angry at us is that beneath the rubble of the Bush years, we still represent a promise and ideal that Europe has been furious that we&#39;ve abandoned.&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I could be projecting my own heartbreak over&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/news\/international\/countriesandterritories\/iraq\/abu_ghraib\/index.html?scp=1-spot&amp;sq=abu%20ghraib&amp;st=cse\">Abu Ghraib<\/a>&#0160;and the&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/safefree\/resources\/17343res20031114.html\">Patriot<\/a>&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.americanprogress.org\/issues\/2003\/11\/b12760.html\">Act&#0160;<\/a>and all the other profanities done in our name; at the horrific lack of inspired leadership both at home and abroad just after 9\/11, at the war (How could it happen again &#8211; after Vietnam; the same lessons never learned, the same hubris?), at the craven attitude toward energy and life at the bottom end of our economic ladder &#8211; at all of it.&#0160; But I don&#39;t think so.&#0160; Rather, it seems that under all the anger Europeans have manifested toward the United States, they, like us, want an American leader they can believe in.&#0160; An America they can believe in.&#0160; And Barack Obama is about as close to that is you can get without moving to another dimension.<\/p>\n<p>The foundation laid by that inspiration will get us, and our old friends newly re-engaged, through the terrible, tough days ahead.&#0160; Without a leadership of hope and belief, natural allies outside our borders will be lost to us, as they so sadly have been these past years.&#0160; And as Senator Obama reminded us, we can&#39;t afford that.&#0160; Not now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#0160;First I got this email from a young friend:&#0160; &quot;LOVED IT &#8211; Just brilliant and I am happy to vote again.&quot;&#0160; Then I watched The Speech again early this morning&#0160;on C-SPAN&#0160;and marveled at the reaction of 200,000 Berliners in a city that has been, in recent years, a tough room for American leaders.&#0160; We&#39;ve spenta &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/25\/july-25-2008-barack-obama-and-berlin-what-we-should-and-can-be\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">July 25, 2008: BARACK OBAMA and BERLIN: WHAT WE SHOULD and CAN BE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,9,51,52],"tags":[79,80,81,82,3415,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90,91,3414,92,93,21,94,95,3419,96],"class_list":["post-1202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-politics","category-webtech","category-weblogs","tag-abu-ghraib","tag-american-presidency","tag-berlin","tag-bush","tag-current-affairs","tag-david-brooks","tag-europe","tag-europe-us-relations","tag-european-us-relations","tag-george-bush","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-history","tag-international-relations","tag-life","tag-obama","tag-obama-berlin-speech","tag-politics-2","tag-president-bush","tag-presidential-candidate","tag-travel","tag-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-jo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1875,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1202\/revisions\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}