What accounts for Europe's love affair with Obama?

The most adulatory statements on Obama have been made in the German media, where Obama is due to speak to an audience of hundreds of thousands in Berlin today. Der Spiegel makes references to The Messiah factor being motivated by a broad yearning for a new America. The Frankfurter Rundschau proclaimed, Lincoln, Kennedy, Obama. The Berliner Morgenpost described him as The New Kennedy and the Bild followed suit, writing, This Black American Has Become the New Kennedy!

There is, in such statements, a degree of self-delusion, particularly in liberal media circles. A poll in Britains Guardian found that if a US election were to be decided in the UK, then Obama would beat the Republican John McCain by a margin of five votes to one.

In an op-ed piece in the same newspaper, Gary Younge explained the phenomena of Obamamania as a by-product of the pervasive and profound damage done to the worlds view of America by George Bush. Most Europeans see him not just as Bushs likely successor but as his absolute negationthe anti-Bush. Where the current president is belligerent, parochial, indifferent and oafish, Obama is conciliatory, worldly, curious and refined.

The Guardians Sunday sister paper, the Observer, ran a piece by Constanze Stelzenmüller, citing the same basis for the adulation of Obama.

President Obama is finally coming to Europe! All right, the Americans havent elected him ... yet. But thats a mere technicality as far as were concerned. We made up our minds long ago: our President is Barack Obama.

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