Berlin is abuzz about Senator Obama’s upcoming speech on Thursday 7:00 PM local time.
How many folks will come to see the messiah as he has been called by some journalists over here? Many press outlets quoted a city government official’s estimate of 10,000 to one million people. Wow, that is so precise! It seems that nobody else dares to publish an estimate. It could be a comparatively small gathering. Or it could be a huge gathering like when President Kennedy said “Ich bin ein Berliner.” This is so exciting…
Obama has been described as the New Kennedy by a German tabloid. Apparently Obama is going to follow in Kennedy’s footsteps and will say in German “I can listen.” That is certainly the message Germans (Europeans) want to hear. It will, however, be a campaign event to win votes in the US. (For some strange reason, Europeans are still not allowed to vote in US elections, despite the important role America plays around the world.) Thus, he is expected to deliver some tough love: No more free rides for Europe.
It is unprecedented. Anne Applebaum writes that Obama’s world tour indicates a change in America’s political culture: American voters are aware of the damage the current administration has done to the US image and are not indifferent to how their country is perceived abroad: “The Most Popular American in Europe Since Elvis“
I will attend his speech and try to capture the mood in the audience with my video camera. I will also conduct random interviews with ordinary folks in the audience.
What questions shall I ask? Is there anything you would like to know from German Obama fans and critics? (I will also ask American Berliners and others.) I guess, one of the obvious questions would be: Will you support sending German troops to southern Afghanistan, if President Obama asks for it? What else? I’d appreciate your input! Thanks.
Joerg Wolf is founder and editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Review (http://atlanticreview.org), a blog on transatlantic relations sponsored by the German Fulbright Alumni Association.
He currently works as editor-in-chief of the Open Think Tank atlantic-community.org in Berlin.
Joerg studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and worked as a research associate for the International Risk Policy project at the Free University’s Center for Transatlantic Foreign and Security Policy. He has been a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Washington DC and has worked for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Cairo and in Berlin.