Democratic convention: plenty of black-, brown-, etc. skinned people hanging around, many of which female; Republican convention: Very few of these; instead, relatively many “sturdy to fat white men,” in clothes more formal than he remembers seeing in Denver. Democratic: live band in the hall, lots of dancing; Republican: piped-in music, about the only dancing being that routine with all their identical cowboy hats that the Texas delegation performs. Democratic: a high-tech podium with a large video-screen upon which you are sure to see the live head-shot of someone being mentioned in the speaker’s speech, if said subject-person is at all to be found in the convention hall; Republican: an installation not so technically adept, basically calibrated to display humongous photos of a young, wounded John McCain. (Say, did you know that he spent quite a few years captive in Hanoi as a North Vietnamese POW?)

C’mon Levi – Lose the Kid Already!

Remarque actually uses the majority of space in this blog-post of his to grouch about his lack of access to those whom he really would like to interview. I guess that’s about what we can expect from such a rank journalistic outsider (“Interview request from the Volkskrant? Who dat?”), but he also does not help his cause with his rather eccentric choice of subjects. He wants to interview the McCain boys, because he remembers reading in John McCain’s autobiography about how McCain really didn’t want to go into the military, but felt he had no choice because both his grandfather and his father had become highly-accomplished naval officers. They have also gone into the military: do they feel the same way? And he also desires dearly the opportunity to pose a question to another figure scheduled to show up in St. Paul, one cast into public renown only recently, namely Levi Johnston, that hockey-mad Wasilla High School senior who got Bristol Palin with child. And the question would be along the lines of “C’mon Levi, what if your future mother-in-law didn’t happen to be the right-wing, anti-abortionist Alaska state governor: would you still be getting married and having the kid?” From the indication on Levi’s MySpace page (“I don’t want kids” – MySpace profile since taken down), he rather suspects the answers would be in the negative.

Remarque also has includes a head-shot of Levi in this article, and he is indeed said to be a hunky redneck, but ladies (and you non-traditional males), there’s no need to click on Remarque’s link just for that. That very same head-shot, plus another photo of him in action on the hockey-rink, plus a demure portrait of the mother-to-be in hoodie-sweatshirt, and then of course all the details about the love-affair known as of this point are available in English courtesy of the New York Daily News. (Britol Palin’s pregnancy was an open secret back home, and the lede: “He’s a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she’s a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.”) In fact, if you compare them you can tell that that’s the same photo of Levi that Remarque uses on the Volkskrant page, but it’s somewhat distorted. Oh, and check out the hockey-rink picture, specifically the advertising hoarding to the rear. “Supporting Valley Hockey: Valley Urology“: Alaska really does seem to be some sort of different country, doesn’t it?

Street-Fighting for Universal Health Care?

Speaking of a different country, let’s turn briefly now to France, to the French Communist Party organ L’Humanité and its coverage of (as you might expect) the street-demonstrations happening outside the Republican convention itself (Wave of arrests at the Republican convention; no by-line). The article writes of 10,000 showing up to protest on Monday even as the convention itself was reduced to the bare administrative minimum out of consideration for Hurricane Gustav. According to L’Humanité, those protestors were objecting to the War in Iraq, which is also how I heard it elsewhere. On the other hand, yesterday’s (i.e. Tuesday’s) protestors were said to be demonstrating “for universal health care, better social protection, and free university tuition.” Those are all things the French Communist Party stands for, but somehow I tend to doubt that this is an accurate portrayal of their policy platform. The article does also note how these demonstrations in Minnesota sparked a number of violent confrontations with the police, as compared with the demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Denver which passed without any such incidents. It also mentions three journalists who were arrested while covering the demonstrations (against “this convention,” as the article puts it, “which would not suffer any criticism”), including the founder of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman.

This is all good red-blooded leftist journalism, from a source which, even if foreign, George W. Bush would still also be glad to label as the “angry left”, describing circumstances that certainly lead to violent confrontations between demonstrators and police (although the question remains open whether that violence was mainly the fault of the former or of the latter). I was disappointed, though, because it seems there was a deliberate wave of preventive searches and arrests that occurred last weekend, before the convention even started. Talk about your violation of First Amendment (and Fourth Amendment) rights, talk about intimations of an incipient police state: L’Humanité could really have had a field day reporting on that! I’m sorry I didn’t see anything like that, but perhaps I just missed it – remind me to go back and search through my RSS reader again.

                          

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying here to push any Republican-inspired “Messiah” or “Moses-parting-the-seas” irony to cast last evening’s events in a disparaging light. Indeed, it was an impressive spectacle – complete with letter-perfect weather! – that itself rightly dominated the news-cycle and to which reactions still dominate that news-cycle this morning.

The same is not quite true in Europe, which has plenty else to talk about today, but Barack Obama’s speech has still gotten plenty of attention even now (i.e. as your EuroSavant writes this), less than 12 hours after it was delivered. Let’s again start with reactions from those who were vouchsafed their own up-close look at the Senator’s speechifying, last July in Berlin, namely the Germans.

First to Sabine Muscat, Financial Times Deutschland (Obama – on firm ground):

It was a place for great words, but this time they stayed away. For it was more important for Obama this evening to hit the right tone. But he thereby lost his own style. . . . His speech had to fulfill many demands. It had to be personal, for many voters still maintained that they didn’t know him. It had to be specific, so that it could finally become clear that Obama stood for a program and not just pretty words. It had to attack his Republican opponent John McCain, in order to show that it was not only Republicans who could hit hard. A bit more of the down-to-earth would also be good, for sometimes Obama seemed scholarly and arrogant. Unifying the Party was a further necessity, to seal the peace after the hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. . . . [Nonetheless] Obama delivered a completely normal political speech. Even in front of the Greek columns, the bold vision that usually his is identifying characteristic went missing. There were many very good phrases in this speech, yet none of them really had the sort of impact that would propel then into the history books. . . . his politically wise and artfully delivered, if not very innovative, speech . . . showed how quickly an Outsider on the way to the White House has to adjust his individual style to the mainstream.

From the Neue Presse (of Hannover: Obama’s Night: Gripping election speech – but without exuberance):

It was a Hercules-size assignment that Obama was taking on: he had to enthuse and inspire, living up to his reputation of being as charismatic as John F. Kennedy once was. But he wanted to avoid gestures and phrases that would make it easy for the Republicans to defame him as a hollow pop-star or even as a presumptuous prophet. Obama was supposed to describe aptly the promised “change” for a “new America” but at the same time not be too vague, and to take on the economic fears of the middle-class, to reassure them. He wanted to attach himself to Martin Luther King’s dream, but he didn’t want to make himself into the black people’s candidate, but rather a politician of a unified, reconciled America that had finally overcome at least politically the racial divide. Obame showed himself equal to this gigantic task. . . . In Denver stood what was already a Barack Obama with his feet firmly planted on the ground, who deliberately forswore emotion on the stage defiantly decorated with Greek columns.

From Die Zeit (Obama’s Coronation Mass):

Barack Obama in his speech showed America the way into the 21st century. He raked his competitor John McCain and the Bush Era over the coals. Whether patriotism, arms control, or the duties of a commander-in-chief, he left no sensitive subject unmentioned. He painted the bigger picture and at the same time remained concrete. Obama spoke of the necessary painful realizations and of the duty of moral and political renewal. “America,” he called out,” we cannot turn back. Not in front of the many tasks that lay before us.” And under the ear-splitting jubilation of his 80,000 supporters he declared: It’s time that the Republicans admit their mistakes and that the Democrats carry out the necessary turn-around. “Eight years are enough” became the battle-cry that will ring into the following weeks.

From Christian Wernicke, correspondent in Denver for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Obama speaks plainly):

Another great speech, naturally. That the Democratic presidential candidate is a master wordsmith is something that America has almost gotten used to. Especially at such an occasion as this – his acceptance “with humility” of the nomination before more than 80,000 supporters in Denver’s football stadium. And yet his verbal fireworks offered three surprises: Seldom has the Senator from Chicago spoken so sentimentally (about himself), so concretely (about his program), and so aggressively (about his opponent John McCain). . . . Obama called McCain out, politically and very personally. At the latest on Monday the opponent will fire back. Then the Republican convention begins.

And now to France: From Patrick Sabatier, special correspondent in Denver for Le Point (Barack Obama and the “promise of America”):

Obama’s speech did not reach the heights of lyricism of that of Dr. King, nor the force of that of Roosevelt or the vision of Kennedy, but the candidate nonetheless once more gave a demonstration of his very great eloquence. He presented a pitiless indictment of the bankruptcy of the Bush presidency, which he claimed had put in peril “the promise of America.” He mounted a frontal attack on the dogmatic ideology of the conservatives, whose “ownership society” (Bush’s slogan) has been revealed as “a society of every man for himself, and you’re on your own.” “Tonight, I tell Americans: enough!” Obama proclaimed, and was echoed by the crowd. Above all, he launched a bitter attack against John McCain, mocking him on the economy and social security. (“It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he just doesn’t get it.”), as well as on the subject of national security. . . . He occupied himself above all, as had Al Gore before him, with depicting the Republican candidate as a simple continuation of the Bush policies.

From Sylvain Cypel, writing for Le Monde (Barack Obama promises the renewal of America):

In a speech marked by his hymn to the “American promise,” to the “American soul,” to his desire to reconcile Americans with each other, the Democratic candidate nonetheless dedicated a part of his appearance to defining his socio-economic priorities. Two axes predominated: the intervention of the State to relaunch the economic machinery and the re-establishment of the purchasing-power of wage-earners. . . . But did this speech remove the doubt about his personality? . . . The assignment will in any case be arduous. In the first place, his virtuosity does him a disservice: deep America does not hold “pretty talkers” in very high esteem. And who can believe, as the Democratic convention tried to paint him, that he is only “an American like all the others”? In the eyes of most he can only be outside the norm, by his origins, his career, his unexpected rhetoric. And in any case, as “the first black candidate in American history” his “exceptionality” is set. “Obama is so far from us. McCain does not formulate more practical proposals, but the average American can more easily identify with him,” said Jim LeMaster, a delegate [presumably Democratic!] from Nebraska. . . . Above all, the unanimous reactions [to last night's speech] were that, with a tone less lyric but with an unaccustomed firmness, he had shown that he will be for John McCain an entirely tougher adversary than John Kerry was four years ago for George Bush.

Oh, and if you’d like to see Obama’s speech translated into French, in its entirety, just go here: Verbatim: “We fall and rise again as a single nation. You can also peruse a minute-by-minute recounting of the events of last night at Invesco Field (i.e. pretty much live-blogging – and in French of course, since this is also from Le Monde) here.

Bleaches Whiter-Than-White?

Moving to Denmark, the daily Politiken takes a unique viewpoint on Obama’s speech (Obama woos the white middle-class), or at least adopts that viewpoint from its interviewees. The article begins by noting that the name “Martin Luther King” was itself not pronounced once during the speech. This is consistent with the thesis propounded by two “experts” (Danish academics with a specialty in US affairs) that an important function of Obama’s speech last night was downplaying his Afro-American aspect, in favor of trying his best to address and ingratiate himself with the white middle- and working-classes – the latter of which, in particular, he often seemed to have difficulties connecting with during the primaries. He succeeded, they both say – and managed to add some attacking licks on John McCain to boot.

Oh, and what a shame! Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende reports here (Grandma slept while Obama spoke) how Obama’s grandmother – on his father’s side – did not get to share in his Democratic presidential nomination triumph. She could not follow along with his great speech on TV, in the first place because the village where she still lives in Kenya does not have electricity. (And in the second place because it took place very early the next morning, Kenyan time.) Still, she’s quite confident that he’ll eventually make it all the way to the White House as President.

American Politics Too Emotional

Finally, a couple of what you could call “accessory” articles. In the first one, Der Spiegel writer Severin Weiland interviews CDU politician Peter Hintze, a close political colleague to Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel who attended the Democratic National Convention, in an article entitled “In Germany one is allowed to be more dispassionate.” Yes, the festivities and general hullabaloo at Denver’s Pepsi Center, and then at Invesco Field, is what really made an impression on Herr Hintze. Although it created truly moving moments – for Hintze it was the appearance of the dying Edward Kennedy – he is sure that this sort of emotionalism will never come to German politics: Germans are suspicious of it, out of bitter historical experience, and also from a desire to leave even top politicians at least a little bit of privacy. It follows, then, that politicians’ wives will surely never have the prominence they have in American politics. Interestingly, according to Herr Hintze neither will the Internet – that is necessary as a political tool in the US because the country is so big, whereas attempts to use it for German politics have so far failed.

And then another article from Der Spiegel, this from the magazine’s correspondent in Denver, Marc Pitzke, about Republican attempts to interfere in the Democratic National Convention (Republicans send saboteurs to the big Obama shindig). The lede: “A cease-fire during the party-conventions – that is almost an unwritten rule in the USA. Nonetheless the Republicans did not want to leave the big stage to Barack Obama alone; their trouble-makers showed up even in the Democrats’ convention-hall.” And he goes on to describe the impressionable 20-somethings sent by the Republican Party to Denver to make various mischief. It’s not as if they are in camouflage: they do wear their McCain t-shirts, yet not only manage to find their way into the Pepsi Center but also attract a healthy amount of attention from the press. There is simply too much press there at the Democratic Convention, you see, and too little authentic “Democratic news” available to fill their needs. Apart from this, there is also the Republican “Command Center” set up near the convention site. (This is apparently the installation which also served as the site of the “Happy Hour for Hillary” that I covered here previously.) There you can find Republican luminaries like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani – when the latter is not strolling into the Pepsi Center as well to greet his many “friends” in there – spouting anti-Obama talking-points.

But that’s OK: as Pitzke notes, the Republican convention follows next week – and the Democrats have already rented office space in Minneapolis. At this point let me go to my dictionary to remind myself the German for “good for goose” and “good for gander.”

                          

(Oh, and why French and Danish today? Just following this weblog’s general modus operandi, i.e. because I felt like it, although I also had a sense of not having discussed anything French or Danish lately and wanted to re-balance things a bit.)

However, I did run across an interesting piece by Johan Vardrup, the reporter sent to Denver by the well-respected Danish daily Berlingske Tidende, entitled Republicans hold happy hour for Hillary. From its very first line in the lede (“What won’t one do to fish for votes?”) you get a clear-cut sense of Vardrup’s attitude here: Damn, these Americans truly play some electoral hardball!

The subject here is the Happy Hour for Hillary staged on Monday by the Republican Party, staged in Denver of course, in fact just about as close as they could find a suitable place to the Pepsi Center where the Democratic convention is going on. And although it turned out that the eponymous guest of honor never showed up – despite the open offer of a free beer, as Vardrup notes – the point was really to offer a congenial forum for those of her supporters still not ready to support Obama, even to the point of considering voting for McCain (one of which, a certain Debra Bartoshevich, has already done a campaign ad for McCain, although Vardrup does not mention this in the article). In point of fact, Clinton through her spokesperson made it clear that she did not recommend that this “Happy Hour” be included in any Democratic delegate’s convention itinerary. Reactions that Vardup tracked on an on-line pro-Hillary discussion forum ranged from regarding this Republican move as a friendly gesture to calling it outright manipulation.

Man Who Knows Too Much = Presidential Loser

Moving on within the Danish press, I naturally called upon my favorite Danish observer of American affairs, Paul Høi and his weblog (off the Berlingske Tidende site) American Conditions. He hasn’t quite yet filed a reaction to Hillary’s speech yet – or indeed to the Democratic convention in any respect (wise man!) – but nonetheless his column of yesterday offers a “home run” of an insight into American politics. It’s entitled Stupidity, and perhaps it’s best to skip first to the very end of the piece for a summary of his point: “My rule of thumb: The man who knows too much is always eliminated in spy novels, and the same is true – whether one likes it or not – in American presidential elections.”

The thesis is simple: Americans want as their president not somebody manifestly above-average intellectually – i.e. superior to most of them – but rather about as smart as they are themselves. From Høi’s calculations, this explains the winner in (almost) all presidential elections since the Second World War, and it also explains the lamentable state to which the McCain-Obama campaign debate has already sunk at this relatively early point. Of course that debate need have nothing actually to do with the issues! It’s far more important for victory to succeed in painting your opponent as someone “elite” – “who eats brie and sips Chardonnay,” as Høi recalls was George H.W. Bush’s description of the cartoonist Gary Trudeau once his depiction in “Doonesbury” while he was president started to grate.

Høi is honest enough to admit that this viewpoint is hardly original with him. Early in his piece he refers to a 1999 article by Jonathan Chait advancing much the same argument in the New Republic, “Why America Loves Stupid Candidates,” which was accompanied by a crackerjack drawing of candidate George W. Bush with a dunce’s cap. But this pattern allegedly holds true all the way back to the 1948 surprise victory by Harry Truman over Thomas Dewey, with only one exception that Høi is willing to admit of, that being John F. Kennedy (who, we’ll recall, barely won the 1960 election and indeed might have gained crucial electoral support from the residents of several Chicago-area cemeteries). Jimmy Carter? He positioned himself as a simple peanut farmer from Plains, GA, while in 1992 Bill Clinton took care to don a working-class, “salt-of-the-earth” mantle (as Hillary did also this year, Høi admits). The 2000 election was naturally a classical manifestation of this syndrome: quite apart from any claims to have invented the Internet (generally manufactured by his detractors), just making clear to people how thoroughly he understood it was a grievous blow to Al Gore’s candidacy. (In this connection, here’s a bonus tidbit from the article: in Danish they actually have a word for “nerd,” – it’s nørd!) And we all have had almost eight years to get to know George W. Bush very well indeed, the second set of four largely thanks to the allegedy very “French” John Kerry.

And Your “Joe Sixpack” Winner Is . . .

So which of the current candidates is likely to benefit most from this underlying dynamic? Høi thinks it will be McCain, whom he terms clearly “the most anti-intellectual” of the two main candidates. True, true, McCain has appeared far more often on “The Tonight Show,” “The Daily Show,” etc. (not to mention in a movie), and is a far, far richer man than Barack Obama – but there you go again resorting to logic, my son, forgetting that we’re talking about American politics here! All of John McCain’s money really doesn’t enter into the equation, since according to Høi what matters is not finances per se but rather demonstrating a proper non-elitist attitude – i.e. that you’re just another “Joe Sixpack.” (Another linguistic bonus here: “Joe Sixpack” in Danish is mulde-Jens, from muld meaning “sod”!) The Obama campaign recently has belatedly recognized and started to fire back on this front, such as with the ads riffing off of John McCain’s inability to remember how many houses he and Cindy have, but Barack Obama might be fatally disadvantaged here – after all, he won scholarships to top universities, and even became editor of the Harvard Law Review. And so, as ever, the American electorate might again wind up with a president reflecting them most broadly – perhaps the president they truly deserve.

                          

(By the way, among the quotes in the article is one from Democratic superdelegate Reggie Whitten from Oklahoma: “. . . I think people in small towns have many reasons to be bitter” – offered with no context about how that particular adjective has had its meaning inflated in the recent political environment.)

How to account to Focus’ German audience for this crazy American politician, carrying on in a contest she seemingly cannot win? As one explanation, the magazine simplyl terms the Democratic Party leadership as indulgent (nachsichtig) towards her. But it also quotes Barack Obama himself (re-translated here from the German): “There aren’t many people in American politics who can take eleven defeats in a row, stay in the race, and then raise $35 million. In this sense she is one-of-a-kind.”

Ah, but this still cannot go on for much longer, Focus reports, as her party is steadily losing its patience. One focus is on Tuesday’s upcoming primary in Pennsylvania: an outright defeat there to Obama would presumably spell the end of her campaign, but according to New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine she must “clearly” win there in order to continue. (Yes, that “clearly” is not defined further.) Or else, according to others, the end of the primary season at 3 June should mark a winner, or else sometime by the end of June. But the sands of time for the Clinton campaign are running out.

                          

In the view of things propounded here, the situation doesn’t look particularly good for the Democratic Party: “[t]he Democratic claimants to the White House seem to be prepared for a terrible war of attrition beyond 4 March,” whereas on the Republican side John McCain can relax and look forward to Tuesday’s results mathematically making him the official Republican Party candidate.

The article goes on to savor how neither Clinton nor Obama show indication of backing down in the least as the important Ohio and Texas (and Rhode Island, and Vermont) primaries approach. Of course, there’s now that new Clinton TV ad out (and La Libre goes into detail: “It’s 3:00 AM and your children are asleep. But there’s a telephone at the White House and it’s ringing! Gasp! Etc.), to which the Obama campaign put up a quick counter-ad, with the same “3:00 AM” lead-in but then going on to question Senator Clinton’s judgment in voting for the Iraq War Resolution. Then there’s the obscure fact that both campaigns scheduled major voter rallies for last Friday evening (29 Feb.) in San Antonio, TX. Who knows which side’s rally was actually first to be scheduled; that apparently was not about to faze the other side if they also had their heart set on spending Friday evening in San Antonio, too. Naturally, given the preponderance around that city of military installations and therefore of both active-duty and retired military personnel, both candidates emphasized their national security credentials at their respective rallies. The article also makes mention of a report from the (Fort Worth, TX) Star-Telegram that the Clinton campaign is prepared to go to court to challenge the Texas primary results, given that the primary process there is a confused mixture of direct primary-voting and caucuses.

Interestingly, neither side has made public any official calendar of the respective candidates’ travels after 4 March – except that Clinton campaign staffers have given word that she plans a campaign stop to Wyoming. That is of a piece with the general tenor of this article: that the Clinton campaign ultimately does not intend to stop, no matter what may happen. You’ve got to wonder at all this, given all the other speculation that Clinton simply has to abandon her campaign if she achieves anything else on Tuesday other than strong wins in both Texas and Ohio – and given the intense pressure on her to do from other political figures. But it’s also true that sometimes those the closest to a story can be blinded to the reality of the forest by seeing too many of the trees. Perhaps La Libre/AFP knows something; anyway, “Time Will Tell.”

                          

Unfortunately, most of the articles I surveyed in the German press covering Kerry’s acceptance speech were happy to limit themselves to a mere “translation function,” i.e. explaining to their readers what Kerry said. Most disappointing was such a “translator” article in Die Zeit (Kerry Wants to Restore the USA’s Prestige), from which we ordinarily can expect better – and that article itself was borrowed from the German business newspaper Handelsblatt. EuroSavant readers presumably had plenty of opportunity to read in English what Kerry said, if they didn’t already see the speech on TV live, so such articles are not so useful.

Handelsblatt wisely chose to keep its higher value-added materials for itself, though, as we can see from its editorial on Kerry’s speech (Bridge-Builder Kerry) from correspondent Michael Backfisch.

Backfisch first notes Kerry’s efforts to “fully play-out his military experience” at the convention, in order to try to demonstrate that he can be just as tough on national security as President Bush. (No kidding; do I detect some second-hand “translation” happening here, namely of what every American has already figured out?) But then he starts to fill in more why he calls Kerry a “bridge-builder” in the piece’s title. Kerry’s deliberate policy of avoiding a confrontational tone against the present administration was a sign that he was trying to profile himself as a reconciler (Versöhner) between the two sides of a divided nation. He invoked John F. Kennedy by appealing to America’s pioneering spirit; but he also invoked Ronald Reagan when he asserted that America’s best days still lie ahead. Still, although Backfisch calls Kerry’s speech “one of his best,” he also notes that it was far from concrete and specific on a number of important points. In particular, in Backfisch’s estimation Kerry’s Iraq policy is just as schwammig (“spongy”; “porous,” if you will) as that of President Bush.

A SHARP FRANKFURT TONGUE

Even better commentary comes from Frankfurter Rundschau correspondent Dietmar Ostermann, who attended the Boston convention and had the time to file an article of personal reflections (Candidate Kerry) in addition to his straight-forward dispatches of what was going on there. Ostermann pulls few punches. He finds that salute and “reporting for duty” line that Kerry began his speech with “somewhat childish”: “The man wants to become president. Commander-in-chief, in other words. There he stands, grinning and saluting like some private.” And you might have heard that Kerry served in combat in Vietnam; Ostermann is quick to complain that the Democrats brought forth this particular fact of John Kerry’s life “again and again, until one knew it by heart and simply could not stand to hear about it again.” Out of that eighteen-minute biographical film shown, a full half was devoted to that Vietnam service. “Kerry was a mere four months in the Mekong Delta back then,” Ostermann writes. “Then he let himself be pulled out of the line of fire, and Vietnam, with three light wounds. Four months of hell, that’s supposed to justify a claim to the White House in 2004?”

That is some rather harsh evaluation – and the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper for which Ostermann writes is supposed to be rather “leftist” and so predictably on the side of any US Democratic candidate. But as Ostermann writes, the problem remains, even after the convention, that the only convincing filling-in of the sentence “I support John Kerry because . . .” is that he is the anti-Bush. And he is that in more ways than one; here Ostermann cites (but misspells the name of) Thomas Oliphant, columnist for the Boston Globe, who has known Kerry since the 1970s. John Kerry is certainly no “Mr. Charisma”; he is no Kumpeltyp (= roughly “man of the people”) like George W. Bush.

IS THE US READY FOR A BREZHNEV?

In his acceptance speech, Ostermann reminds us, Kerry spoke for a full 50 minutes, much against advice from media professionals, who warned that, in the age of the MTV attention-span, no one would listen to him all the way through to the end. But they did nonetheless, by and large, and in Ostermann’s eyes Kerry thereby succeeded with this speech in making seriousness (i.e. earnestness) the hallmark of his campaign for president. It’s Nachdenklichkeit statt Sprüchen: Thinking/reflection instead of sound-bites.

The question then is: is America ready for such a candidate, for such seriousness, even for a “Brezhnev” (as conservative columnist David Brooks has christened Kerry due to his long, heavy speeches)? At least the New York Times seems to think so; as Ostermann quotes the judgment of that newspaper, “In difficult times the country loses interest in the President as celebrity-figure and longs [instead] for solidness, trustworthyness, and sensible judgment.”

TURNING GREEN

Finally, a recurring theme in EuroSavant’s own blog-coverage of the Democratic convention has been that of foreigners-in-attendance, often as representatives of foreign political parties. The correspondent sent to Boston by the Financial Times Deutschland, Hubert Wetzel, comes up with a fascinating article (with a fascinating title: US Democrats Discover Little Green Friends) about how Democrats these days show more interest in working together with Germany’s Green Party than with what you would ordinarily regard as their more natural partner, namely the trade-union-oriented Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands or SPD. (The SPD happens to be the party of Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder and so is currently in power, although it most certainly won’t be after the next elections. But the Greens are also in power; they are the junior member of the current “Red-Green” governing coalition.)

One important reason for this alleged development is that the American labor movement itself dominates what goes on in the Democratic Party less and less. But it’s also because, as Will Marshall of the Democratic Leadership Council puts it, “Interest in innovation, modernity, and practical solutions is stronger with the Greens than with other German parties.” This is apparently more in line with the business-friendly, pragmatic attitudes of the “New Democrats” whose pioneer in the Democratic Party was Bill Clinton. In particular, Wetzel cites the common interest in reducing dependence on oil imports (although for the American Democrats this is a national security issue, while for the German Greens it’s a matter of ecological policy), and the promotion of democracy in the Middle East.

Accordingly, current Green Party leader Reinhard Bütikofer (the Greens rotate their leaders on a regular schedule) had by all accounts a great time visiting the Democratic convention in Boston, meeting if not with the candidate himself, then with his environmental adviser. And he was accompanied on his schmoozing with the unfortunately-named Ralf Fücks, who however is quite a VIP himself as head of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, basically the Greens’ own think-tank, whose Washington office, Wetzel reports, has taken up an important liaison function between these American and German parties.

So if it was not so cool to be a Frenchman in Boston – you had to stifle your accent and keep your head down – apparently it was still A-OK to be German, even if you sport a name that tends to turn American heads in amazement much faster than any French name would. Maybe that’s because Americans can always be sure that, deep down (and as that same Economist article reports) the Germans will always love us. They can’t get enough of American movies, for one thing. Among the best of the pack of “translation” articles reporting Kerry’s speech was the fact-filled contribution from Die Welt: you knew that Steven Spielberg worked on that Kerry film biography, but did you know that Morgan Freeman provided the voice-over, and that the whole thing was directed by Oscar-winner James Moll?

                          

But that’s generally the same in them all; that’s boring. Let’s turn instead to the more-diverse side-articles, such as crack Berlingske Tidende political writer Paul Høi’s first-hand encounters with security in Boston-town (We’re Off to Boston, My Friend).

“It begins already in the airplane,” Høi reports in this “convention diary” – that stifling security. He has the misfortune to be assigned a seat in a row with an emergency exit-door, and so is handed an extra set of instructions about what to do, is told by the stewardess to read it and watched as he does so, and then is quizzed on what he has just read.

Høi had also drawn the assignment to cover the Democratic convention in 2000, in Los Angeles, and there was certainly security laid on there, but nothing like what he observes now. One hundred observation cameras outside the FleetCenter; the near-by subway station closed down, together with the highway downtown; Coast Guard cutters patrolling the harbor with their infra-red nightsights and divers; and helicopters and even F-16s circling watchfully overhead. And of course security dogs; Høi watches as a (female) delegate approaches a squad of three security-men with their bomb-sniffing hounds and gushes “They’re sweet! What are their names?” The response: “We can’t tell you that, ma’am. We’re trying to give the dogs a low profile.”

What with all the security, movement of any kind in the city is very difficult indeed. “This is hell,” Høi’s taxi-driver grouses one day. “I almost just want to go back where I came from.” “Where is that?” “Haiti. We got worse roads, and there are highway-robbers all over the place, but things still move along faster down there.”

BEACON HILL LOCKED DOWN

The heavy security naturally extends to the Kerry family mansion, located in Boston’s high-class Beacon Hill neighborhood, where Høi finds numerous four-wheel-drive vehicles on watch, black or dark-blue, their motors always running, manned by personnel “so voluminous that they [also] should carry a yellow license-plate.” He writes about how, at first, the Kerry neighbors were a bit annoyed about not even being allowed to have their groceries loaded from their car in front of their house. But they’ve gotten over all that now and forged a tight relationship with their guardians, sending out cookies and even whole meals to them. A few of the Beacon Hill ladies have even had specially-designed convention neckties made for them: in gold, silver, blue, green, and red (not separate ties; they’re the same ties, apparently displaying all these colors). “I suppose I should wear it at least once,” one anonymous agent remarked to the Boston Globe.

Finally, in case any one needs reminding of the fact, Høi recalls that both airplanes that slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York originated from Boston’s Logan Airport, after security checks on their passengers that he describes as having been “more than usually liberal.” “Liberal”? Meaning “faulty,” yes? Does Høi realize what he is doing, choosing words like that?

FOREIGN GUESTS: BEWARE COUNTER-PRODUCTIVITY!

I hate to concentrate too much on one writer, but it seems that Paul Høi has already been rather busy in Boston, as he couples his “convention diary” of personal observations with an excellent treatment of the topic we touched upon in yesterday’s post, namely the foreigners in attendance, provocatively titled What Does Europe Need to Do to Get Kerry Elected? This time it’s not French representatives that are the star of the piece, but rather some visitors from Britain’s governing Labour Party. One of them, Martin Salter, says straight-out “I consider George W. Bush as a complete and absolute threat to world civilization, and the sooner he is kicked out the door, the better.” As Salter goes on to point out, he is hardly alone in this attitude among his fellow countrymen, who polls show favor Kerry by a margin of five-to-one (although, he admits, opinion is even more lopsided in countries such as Germany and France).

The thing is, as we saw yesterday in the determination of the Frenchmen in Boston to just keep their Frenchieness to themselves as much as possible, this sort of support from outside is a mixed blessing at best. And Høi does an excellent job of showing just why that is: Americans bridle at the idea of foreigners seeming to dictate to them who their president should be. He quotes that conservative radio paladin, Rush Limbaugh (heard by at least 20 million Americans each day): “Europeans don’t like Bush because they don’t like a strong America. That’s the truth, my friends. Bush is too strong for them. He won’t bow down and kiss their feet or try to come to a consensus with a band of elite, old-money-aristocrat European socialists who are only interested in dictating to us.” (“Old-money-aristocrat European socialists”? Whew – how about if, before we allow someone to pontificate about Europe and Europeans, we ask him or her first to demonstrate that he can locate these countries on a map?)

Høi ultimately concludes that, as rabidly anti-Bush as these Brits or any other visiting foreigners care to be, they’re only wasting their breath and flirting with the prospect of indeed becoming counter-productive in this way. As he quotes the commentator Sunder Katwala in The Observer (that’s a leading British newspaper), there are really only three foreigners who could influence the course of this presidential election:

• Osama bin Laden, who supposedly could ensure Bush’s re-election with some sort of pre-election terror attack. The worrying thing is, we can assume that that’s what he wants to do; “Bush is good for the Islamic cause,” maintains Katwala.
  
• Jacques Chirac, who could throw the entire body of Republican voters into deep confusion by endorsing Bush for re-election.
  
• And then (more seriously, folks) there’s Tony Blair, whose standing among Americans is such that he could greatly further the cause of either candidate with his endorsement. But Blair is taking care to remain studiously neutral – no matter what his Labour Party associates are getting themselves into now over in Boston.
  

SOME BUSH ANTI-ENDORSERS

Other than that, another article that caught my attention in the Danish press – in what you’ll recognize is likewise a humorous vein – is Anders Legarth Schmidt’s piece in Politiken, Michael Moore Invites Bush to the Movies. Yes, now that Fahrenheit 9/11 is opening (tomorrow, in fact) at the “Crawford Peace House” movie theater just down the road a spell from Bush’s Texas ranch, Moore has written the President a letter (posted on his website; in English, of course) about how glad he would be to see him there. After all, “you’ve got the funniest lines in the film!”

Finally, for those who might need reminding along these lines, Politiken features articles both about the forty-eight Nobel Prize winners who collectively endorsed Kerry for President in an open letter last month, and the twenty-six ex-diplomats and -military officers who acted similarly a few weeks before that (Diplomats and Officers: Vote Bush Out).

                          

“Great; just great,” one can imagine the presidential candidate’s staff responding. Could you try not to say that too loud, fella? And certainly not in English, or to any American journalists! In fact, Moscovici will be but one of a French delegation to the convention that includes not only two prominent figures from the right-wing (in French terms) governing UMP party, as well as the “mayor of Saint-Briac (Ille-et-Vilaine)” who also happens to be John Kerry’s cousin, one Brice Lalond. (You can get a fuller list of the VIPs, French and otherwise, from the French newspaper Libération.) But one suspects that position on the French political spectrum, or even blood-relations, isn’t going to matter much; the operating concept is “keep your head down,” because anything French, anything at all, is these days the political kiss of death, as Guillemette Faure writes for Le Figaro in Frenchmen Obliged to Be Discrete. (“Guillemette Faure”? Eeeuhw, what an atrociously-French name! But please go easy on this person – please be gentlemen, gentlewomen, gentlepeople – because this is likely a female French reporter.)

HE’S NOT FRENCH – HONEST!

Yes, anything at all French is supposed to demonstrate one’s unfitness for American politics, which is why the Bush people have already gone after candidate Kerry on this score when there really is not much there to write home about. As Faure recounts the tale, his grandmother married a diplomat – no, not a Frenchman – and so spent some time living there. It was also there that Kerry’s mother, Rosemary, met her husband, but he also was not French but an American soldier. Now, Kerry’s sister, Fiona (certainly a very Irish name there, by the way) did stay and marry in France, and that explains cousin Brice.

And yes, in his youth John Kerry did vacation in France and – perhaps most damning of all – he does speak the language. But not anymore when he doesn’t have to; Faure notes that that Kerry will not respond to French journalists in French (and presumably neither to questions posed in French). Yet still, insinuations along the lines of “Well, he looks French” continue to issue from the Bush-Cheney campaign, together with bumper-stickers along the lines of “John Kerry, President . . . of France!”

In a charming, plaintive sentence that I personally would love to hear Mlle. Faure pose out loud (and yes, in the original French), she writes “How can it be that these accusations of French connections [but no pun or cinematic allusion intended] can harm the Democratic candidate?” Yes, one reason is France’s rather unhelpful stance when it came to the War in Iraq, but it really goes rather beyond that. As she quotes Thomas Frank, author of the recent political book What’s the Matter with Kansas?, “Deep America sees the French as intellectuals who are a bit snobby. And the conservatives have campaigned by treating Democrats as elitists disconnected from the rest of the country. Kerry being supported by the French, that confirms the worst doubts that voters have of him.”

(This hasn’t stopped the Kerry campaign from engaging the services of one Dr. Clotaire Rapaille – ugh! another very French name, and this one’s male! – who however has lived in the States for twenty years and, more to the point, is some sort of marketing genius, having pioneered a so-called “cultural archetypology” technique for identifying and addressing voter population-segments. This is reported in the article A French Doctor for Kerry, by Fabrice Rousselot (yuck! . . . yes, yes . . .) in Libération.)

By and large, though, it seems that the French who are arriving in Boston know the deal, and will keep a low profile. Obviously, they’re only there to observe and learn (or perhaps just to enjoy) in the first place, and it seems that many will perform these things not necessarily mainly at the Fleet Convention Center but rather elsewhere in the area – at the think-tanks and the universities, for example. (Indeed, Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary under Clinton and now president of Harvard, will be receiving Alain Juppé, certainly a major bigwig out of President Jacques Chirac’s party – no less than a former premier, although now under somewhat of a political cloud, but that’s a long story that we won’t get into here.) Naturally, there will also be a French delegation in New York City at the end of August at the Republican convention, where the dynamic will be somewhat different. Indeed, that gives author Thomas Frank an idea: “The French could endorse Bush’s candidacy,” he points out, bursting out laughing. “That would be a great idea to make him lose!”

DETERMINED, BUT NERVOUS

“Make him lose”: maybe the Bush campaign actually has a point in its francophobia, as it’s easy to conclude from the French press that that is precisely what the mission would be, if the French actually had influence or say in the American presidential election. One clue among many is today’s cover of Libération (pictured): “100 Days to Beat Bush.” Yet the Libération staff are clearly well-aware that that is hardly a sure thing. Their articles today on the Democratic convention (other than the purely informational, cited above) have a nervous air, and plenty of advice to give the candidate. (For what it’s worth; but I daresay that it’s advice that Kerry is also getting from wholesome, trustworthy, grade-A All-American sources with clean teeth and healthy bones.) In his article John Kerry the Elusive (although the adjective he uses in the title – l’insaississable – can also even mean “slippery”), the already-mentioned M. Rousselot comes up with “aloof” as the adjective he has most-often found associated with the Democratic candidate, and calls him “prone to contradictions.” Other than his Vietnam service, people really don’t know very much about him; Rousselot cites a recent poll showing that 70% of respondents (all Americans, of course) admitted to not have a very clear idea about him. In his twenty-nine years in the US Senate he has never had a signature piece of legislation attached to his name.

On the other hand, Rousselot gives Kerry credit for his intensive campaigning throughout the country of the past several weeks, during which he has set out his key positions for the voters: cancelling the Bush tax-cuts for the rich, raising the minimum wage, and an internationalist foreign policy “that will permit America to regain her place in the world.” And of course the selection of John Edwards as his vice-presidential candidate was an inspired choice, infusing a new vitalism into the campaign. Says one Democrat, “Edwards is perfect because he obliges Kerry to put himself on the level of the people, on the level of the voters, and if Kerry ‘connects,’ he can go all the way.” The convention, then, offers the Democratic candidate the perfect opportunity to complete this process, to have himself portrayed and portray himself as a convincing “clear alternative” to the incumbent.

In his associated editorial (Second Breath), Antoine de Gaudemar is even more pessimistic about the Massachusetts Senator. We know everything about George W. Bush, he declares; we know little or nothing about John F. Kerry, other than that he fought heroically in Vietnam. His campaign has lacked punch; he has been unable to shake off an aristocratic coldness, nor an impression of lacking any firm convictions. Furthermore, the Democratic has been strangely silent during a 2004 already filled with significant, shocking events: revolt in Iraq, Abu Ghraib revelations, the reports of the the 9/11 and the Iraq Intelligence commissions. And so it’s only natural that he has not benefited in the polls as he should have from the Bush administration’s “frustrations, not to say discredit.” The only spark in what De Gaudemar calls “this dismal campaign” has of course been the introduction of John Edwards (he with “the smile of a dentist”).

Twisting heroically to find a silver lining, De Gaudemar concludes that maybe Kerry is going for a “tortoise strategy” (although that “tortoise” is my interpretation, and not actually a term used by De Gaudemar): slow and steady – especially to the political center – wins the race and the election. Still, what the world sees of him this week will be absolutely crucial to give his campaign that “second breath,” and to prevent this election from being merely a referendum on whether to give George W. Bush a second term.

POTPOURRI FROM THE LESSER NEWSPAPERS

Finally – among all the many other articles from the French on-line press on the Democratic Convention, even as it has yet to formally begin, but there’s only so much time – I gladly repair to the ultra-valuable French press-review feature offered in Le Nouvel Observateur. Here the kind editors of this eminent newsmagazine do part of my job for me – that is, finding articles on the give subject – although the trade-off is that I have little choice but to trust that they have picked out the key extracts from each article. (Right at the top is just such an extract from Antoine de Gaudemar’s editorial in Libération that we just got finished discussing, so we have a “control” to judge how well the Nouvel Observateur editors perform; but I’m afriad it’s still really hard to tell.) Among the contributions worth mentioning, I like this one from Jean-Claude Kiefer out of Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace (and no, it’s not because his last name is not very French, and even though it admittedly has little to do with the DNC):

After the immense wave of sympathy for a United States hit by the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration has unleashed, by incompetence or self-conceit, a fear of America ["américanophobie"] without precedent since the Vietnam War. It translates into a loss of credibility from which international relations must suffer.

This paralyzes the initiatives that Washington might want to take here or there. Too numerous are those countries which already drag their feet and look for the tricks [i.e. the "catch"] in everything the US proposes. With this confidence gone, John F. Kerry or Georges W. Bush [note the spelling!] have no other choice than to re-establish it. Not out of philanthropy but simply because it’s in the interest of the United States.

Or some interesting advice from Patrick Fluckiger of L’Alsace (and what a great non-French name!): Kerry has been spending a lot of his campaign’s effort and energy responding to George Bush’s attacks. But if he really wants to live up to his “JFK” initials (and we can all catch the reference), he needs to use the Convention to go on the offensive and propose some sort of ambitious project. It just won’t do anymore just to recite, as he did last weekend, what are supposedly America’s traditional values: “Faith, family, and the sense of service.”* All of this ne mangent pas de pain – the French expression for, say, “butters no parsnips,” i.e. ultimately doesn’t mean anything, and could risk ceding the initiative back to the Bush-Cheney campaign.

(*Footnote: Fluckiger’s list of America’s values cited by Kerry was actually La foi, la famille, la force et le sens du service, which would make it seem that he lists “Force” as the third such fundamental American value. Huh? Could he have meant something like “the force instilling a sense of service,” or was this Gallic slyness popping up again with a subtle dig at America? I really don’t know. Maybe the Bush-Cheney campaign – together with the supposed opinion from the American heartland – have the French pegged correctly after all!)

                          

Remarkably, during the time that I was criss-crossing the US (from 19 January until yesterday) the Democrats have basically come up with their candidate to challenge George W. Bush in the fall for the presidency, demolishing one front-runner (Howard Dean, of course) and elevating another (John Kerry). Scanning the German press for coverage of this, Die Zeit does a particularly good job, all the more because this newspaper’s editors don’t let its status as a weekly get in the way of that coverage; there’s always the web-site, after all, to send an article to when it is timely and ready, even if the printing-presses are not, as with this article (“John Kerry Remains Favorite”), which appeared shortly after the conclusion of last Tuesday’s Democratic Party primaries in seven states.

TWO-DONKEY RACE

It’s interesting to get Die Zeit’s take on the Democratic situation (from correspondent Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff) in the wake of Tuesday’s primaries, the fullest slate of contests so far. According to Brockhoff, Tuesday’s results show that the struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination is likely to become a Dauerdrama – that is, a long, drawn-out drama. That’s because, although Massachusetts Senator John Kerry had the best results of all on Tuesday and gained the most delegates, Senator John Edwards is coming up fast and turning it into a two-man race – for the most part, at least. While a public opinion poll taken the day of those primaries reveals that a full 80% of Democrats would now be content with Kerry as their party’s standard-bearer, he still has a problem in appealing to the vital political center, as his defeats in South Carolina and Oklahoma supposedly show.

In contrast, Kleine-Brokhoff has Senator John Edwards as the anoited Challenger to the Front-Runner, appealing more to middle-of-the-road voters, as well as being “the new Kennedy, a man who gives the country back a feeling of unlimited possibilities.” However, Edwards has his own problem in turn, in the form of Wesley Clark, whose victory last Tuesday in the Oklahoma primary makes this still rather more than just a two-man race. And after all, General Clark is a Southerner too, and so shares much of Edward’s appeal on that score and with more-conservative voters.

DEAN AS “TRAGIC HERO”

No mention here of any of the other Democratic candidates. That’s why I happen to find Kleine-Brockhoff’s earlier article – Something’s Brewing There – written just after Kerry’s victory in the New Hampshire primary but before this week’s seven-state contests, a bit more appealing. You still won’t find any mention of Dennis Kucinich or Al Sharpton here, or even of Joe Lieberman. But at this stage the German reporter is still willing to devote space to Howard Dean, despite his New Hampshire loss, towards the end of the article. According to Kleine-Brockhoff, Dean is “the tragic hero of New Hamp-shire [sic]: he had been working the crowds here in the Granite State for two years, and seemed invincible there, before the Iowa caucuses result (and his “uncontrolled assertions, his outbreaks of temperament”) brought him down. Still, the German finds that Dean did not lose in New Hampshire as much as had been originally feared; faced with the challenge of recovering from Iowa’s result, Dean’s campaign made changes and fought back, among other things bringing in his wife as a “secret weapon.”

In any case, Kleine-Brockhoff writes, Dean has rendered his party a valuable service: he has “formed the party up against George Bush,” after it first seemed (namely after September 11, of course) that opposing the President in any way was simply going to be impossible. “In the meantime [Dean's] competitors are starting to talk almost aggressively as he.”

Otherwise, the post-New Hampshire story for Die Zeit’s writer is much like the post-South Carolina-Missouri-Arizona-Delaware-etc. story: Kerry trying to appear presidential, as the “sure thing” candidate to take on George W. Bush, while John Edwards with his growing appeal (Kleine-Brockhoff again invokes the Kennedy name on his behalf here) seems a “rocket awaiting ignition.” Kerry now takes care to have so many veterans taking part at electioneering events on his behalf that they all seem to be more “veterans-shows” than Kerry events. Often the star turns out to be Jim Rassman, whom Kerry saved from certain death from falling overboat in a South Vietnamese river many decades ago. “[Rassman] knows of the Germans’ worries about Bush,” Kleine-Brockhoff writes, “and always answers [to German media correspondents such as Die Zeit's man there], ‘Kerry is your hope – and ours.’”

NOT FOR SALE

The article also captures a good sense of New Hampshire’s unique brand of retail politics, in which courting and convincing voters up close and personal is so important; one elderly lady, when asked if she had decided yet for whom she intended to vote, replied “No, I haven’t seen all of the candidates yet.” And the German writer provides some welcoming reassurance by asserting that this “grass-roots democracy” shows that it’s not true that the White House is essentially up for sale each election cycle. Well, one George W. Bush also lost the New Hampshire primary back in 2000, and he had record-setting amounts of money to ultimately work with – and Kleine-Brockhoff does admit that, if the question of who a party’s candidate is going to be remains open beyond New Hampshire into the widespread primaries beyond, then organization – and money – do tend to become decisive. By his analysis, that’s what is happening for Democrats in 2004; remember, even in his later article of this week this observer claims to see that Dauerdrama shaping up.