Amid all the chattering about the Massachusetts special election, there is a brief roundup of commentary from Germany in Der Spiegel. In the “you-don’t-say” category is this observation in Süddeutsche Zeitung:
[Obama's] reform agenda, in its current form, is highly suspect to Americans. And they have the impression that, if he continues piling up debt, he will be gambling away the country’s future.
An “impression” – some vague notion that, apparently pushed by ignorant conservatives, that piling up debt might be a bad thing?
On the more poignant side, Financial Times Deutschland writes:
For everyone else in the world [other than the victorious conservatives], this means that they will have to bid farewell to a candidate for whom the hopes were so high. They will have to say goodbye to the charisma they fell in love with.
It’s hard to say what this really means. Does it mean that Obama has lost his mojo? Or does it mean that his ideals will be diluted in a sea of compromise with those dull and crass conservatives? Surely it’s not an acknowledgment that their love was misplaced.
But the best laugh line also comes from Financial Times Deutschland. It notes that Obama might have to change his style.
After all, he still has a majority in Congress – he could back away from his strategy of bipartisanship … which would mean giving up much of what he spent his first year in office creating.
On second thought, the analysis from this side of the Atlantic has a little more grounding in reality, like the assessment from Mort Zuckerman (a confessed Obama voter), which includes this:
Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”
And no amount of charisma will solve that.
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