Mario Del Pero - 11/ 2011

In the United States, the popularity of Obama has reached new lows. According to the latest Gallup polls, only 43% of Americans approve the job Obama is doing, while 51% disapprove it (approval was at 66% in January 2009 and 50% just a few months ago). Anger on the Right is now compounded by disillusion and disappointment on the Left, with Obama losing consensus among some of his most loyal voters. His main electoral asset seems therefore to be the dismaying weakness of his Republican opponents. Liberals in the United States hoped Obama would radically modify Bush’s approach to the war on terror, abandoning some of its most controversial methods, bravely tackle the economic recession, and punish those mostly responsible for the post-2007 financial turmoil. Out of timidity and, possibly, lack of leadership and courage, the President didn’t deliver on his promises, and rapidly backpedalled both on economics and national security. Most of Europe, particularly liberals and leftists, had the same high expectations. When asked, in early 2009, in which world leader they had more confidence, Germans and French overwhelmingly chose Obama over Sarkozy and Merkel. According to the 2009 survey of the German Marshall Fund, the approval rate of Obama in Europe was unprecedented for any US president: 92% in Germany, 91 in Italy, 88 in France, 85 in Spain (in the same four countries the approval rate of Bush in 2008 had been 12, 27, 11 and 11). “People in the European Union and Turkey,” the authors of the report wrote, had “fallen under the Obama spell.” Obama appeared indeed to be a unique “weapon of mass attraction,” in historian Timothy Garton Ash’s famous definition: the new “American messiah,” for the German liberal magazine Der Spiegel; the admired and globally respected “Dalai Obama,” in the words of foreign policy scholar Constanze Stelzenmüller. One would expect this honeymoon now to be over. Despite all, instead, a majority of Europeans still supports the U.S. president. Indeed, the infatuation with Obama – the “Obamania” that has swept Europe since 2008 – is still very much alive. While obviously down from the 2009 peaks, Obama’s approval ratings in Europe remain surprisingly high. Rendition, Guantanamo, drones, and surge in Afghanistan notwithstanding, Obama’s handling of international politics is approved today by 82% of Germans, 76% of Italians, 75% of French, and 68% of Spaniard (Spain witnessed the largest decrease, down from 85% in 2009). In the EU, the approval of Obama decreased only 8 points, from 83 to 75%, in two years. Moreover, surveys reveal that Europeans tend to make a clear distinction between the president and his policies, which receive far worse ratings. In 2010, 78% of Europeans approved Obama’s foreign policy in general, but less than 50% agreed with the escalation in Afghanistan or the way he managed relations with Iran. In other words, the infatuation was (and is) with the persona of Obama more than with the content of his policies: with what he represents more than what he does. In part, Obama’s popularity is simply derivative. Europe longs for such a U.S. leader also because of what (and whom) he is not: George Bush and John McCain in 2008; Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in 2012. Romney’s recent, over-the-top celebration of U.S. exceptionalism – “America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers. America must lead the world ... As President of the United States, I will devote myself to an American Century. And I will never, ever apologize for America .. I believe we are an exceptional country with a unique destiny and role in the world ” – inevitably recalls the painful memories of the great Transatlantic divide of 2002-2003. But not being Bush or Romney is not certainly sufficient to explain Obama’s extraordinary fame in Europe. Obama’s unique and cosmopolitan biography, which he often exploits in his foreign policy speeches, is an additional factor. Obama – again his persona more than his deeds – has been able to revive the idea that the U.S. is not just back “in the” world, after the unilateral separation of the Bush years, but that it credibly embodies and represents “the” world in its entirety. In this light, one could even argue that Obama and his story are much more exceptionalist (and exceptional) than anything Romney or the other presidential candidates can do or say. Finally, Obama is the kind of leader many Europeans, and European liberals overall, would like to have themselves. Learned, articulated, cosmopolitan, multi (if not post) racial: what more can you ask for? He doesn’t take many decisions nor does he seem able to really lead, that is true, but have European leaders been more effective? Or more capable of making bold choices? Whatever the dissatisfaction and disillusionment with Obama, would one ever trade him for his current, ineffective and uncharismatic European counterparts? Possibly little if measured as a leader, Obama becomes much better when you compare him to other statesmen, in the U.S. and Europe. Combined with the unrelenting power of the myth of (and desire for) “America” in Europe, it helps explain Europe’s never ending passion for the U.S. president.

Mario Del Pero
(Università di Bologna)