Transatlantic Comparisons For Scare-Mongering

There is a certain obsession with the United States in European debates, but there also seems to be a certain obsession with France in the US. Rudy Giuliani for instance recently campaigned with:

If we are not careful and you don’t elect me, this country will be to the left of France.

Ezra Klein takes issue with that:

We could elect Dennis Kucinich and 10 more Democratic senators and we wouldn’t get anywhere near France.

Well, perhaps France is to the right of the United States? Emmanuel responds in A Fistful of Euros to Ezra:

France is also a country where insulting the flag is a criminal offense, where the level of opposition to affirmative action would delight any card-carrying Republican, where about 20% of the student body attend religious schools (double the American percentage) and where capital income is much less heavily taxed than in the U.S.

I agree with Emmanuel’s conclusion that “any attempt to pinpoint a politician, a political party or a whole country on a foreign political axis is usually worthless.”

Unfortunately, such transatlantic comparisons are quite popular and used for scare-mongering: European politicians, pundits and journalists sometimes make negative references to the United States to score points in domestic debates. This is probably most frequent in Germany, where “Amerikanische Verhaeltnisse — “American Conditions” — is a term of disdain, meant to suggest the inhumanity of American capitalism.

Some US politicians and pundits use France in similar ways. Or “Europe” in general. Or they mean France, but say “Europe.” Interestingly enough, Germany, Italy or Spain are not as often used as points of reference as France.

Full disclosure: The last two links go to my own blog Atlantic Review, which also has a post on Transatlantic Obsessions listing the pet issues common in German media coverage of the United States as well as the complains from a French watch blog regarding the American MSM.