Tuesday, 07.15.08

Obama Abroad

Photo by flickr user Luke Robinson under Creative Commons license

Barack Obama's planned international tour has raised questions about whether or not one should electioneer overseas.

What's with all these cocky American politicians traveling abroad? Taking them down a peg seems to be a sport with a fan base both bipartisan and transnational. When George Bush went to the Israeli Knesset two months ago and denounced those who would negotiate with "terrorists and radicals" -- widely interpreted as a dig at Barack Obama -- Rahm Emanuel whipped into action and accused Bush of violating the tradition "that when a U.S. president is overseas, partisan politics stops at the water's edge." And remember when Nancy Pelosi went to Syria last year? Talk radio went crazy about her choice of headgear, and an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal made the wacky suggestion (taken up by a few wacky congressmen) that she be prosecuted under the dusty and irrelevant Logan Act.

The latest casualty is Barack Obama, who, next week, is also going abroad: to Iraq, Afghanistan, the West Bank and, before any of that, Europe. Obama's staff no doubt expected the last destination to be the least contentious. (It has been a while, after all, since we invaded this most friendly of continents.) But that was not to be. The nominee indicated that he wanted to give a speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate -- the country's most famous landmark -- which has rubbed some politicians on both sides of the pond the wrong way.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who may or may not have been leaned on by the Bush administration, described Obama's plan as "a bit odd," and said she was uncomfortable with the idea of an American "electioneering" in her country. A desperately backpedaling Obama campaign now says it will decide today or tomorrow if it ever wanted to use the Gate in the first place. The German government, for its part, is already peddling a healthy compromise based on the past treatment of the average famous guest. As one official put it: "Until now every American guest has walked through the Brandenburg Gate. Journalists have always been present. And the guest has always had something to say." Why can't we do that instead?

Curious observers might wonder if there is perhaps not such a meaningful difference between "giving a speech at the Gate" and "walking through the Gate, publicly, with something to say, in the presence of journalists." But never mind. The whole controversy is based on arguments that are dubious at best. On the German side, the discomfort seems to stem from the fact that (as one source from the Chancellery told Der Spiegel) the Gate is the "most famous and history-rich location in Germany," and is thus reserved for special occasions only. On the American side, hesitation blossoms from the history of presidential speechifying at and near the Gate, especially JFK in June 1963 ("Ich bin ein Berliner") and Ronald Reagan in June 1987 ("Tear down this wall!"). This history means the Gate is also reserved for special people.

Of course, this specialness is precisely what makes the site so appealing to Obama. But I suspect that what's really underlying the concerns on both sides of the Atlantic is a widely shared intuition about democracy -- an intuition that there's just something weirdly undemocratic about a candidate taking his campaign abroad. Isn't American democracy a compact between American voters and their representatives? If so, what are those Germans doing, butting in on our national fun? Wouldn't we be offended -- as Merkel suggested last week -- if German politicos started campaigning here?

The answer to the first question is "Yes," but this does not mean that the consequences of American democracy exist only between American politicians and voters. (Perhaps the point is so cliche and truistic that it's worth mentioning only in a parenthetical, but globalization has made our planet a rather interrelated one. There is nothing unreasonable about judging a candidate based on how he is received abroad, because "abroad" happens to matter a lot.) And the answer to the last question is "it depends" -- mostly on whether or not our media cares to make a big deal out of this kind of story. Foreign politicians do, in fact, campaign here with some frequency: just a couple of months ago, the president of the Dominican Republic held what the Times described as "merengue-infused campaign rallies" in New York.

I have a hard time getting upset about that. The domestic cost of letting foreigners barnstorm here is somewhere between negligible and nonexistent; the domestic gain of seeing our own politicians stumble or stride across the world stage is potentially enormous. Obama might have good practical reasons for avoiding that stage for now -- if enough people whine and call him immodest, it's probably worth giving in -- but we shouldn't think there's something uniquely terrible about a little foreign campaigning.

I think Obama realizes that. The man, after all, is no jelly donut.

— Conor Clarke

Filed Under: Obama/politics/Europe

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