In Denmark, as really most elsewhere in the world, the media are keeping close tabs on the US presidential election – passing on the polling numbers to their audiences, looking for that special insight that might provide a clue about what is likely to happen on Election Day. Of a piece with this is the latest US election coverage from Viggo Lepoutre Ravn of Denmark’s Jyllandsposten (A former Bush-advisor: We have lost). That former advisor is David Frum, actually a former presidential speech-writer, whose comments from an appearance on CNN are quoted to the effect (because this is a translation from the Danish back into English) of “We have to look it in the eye, that we [presumably meaning the Republicans] cannot win the presidential election. We have to concentrate on saving as many of our Senators as possible.” Accompanying this account in Ravn’s article is the news that Obama has now gone ten percentage points clear of McCain in the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll, plus some electoral strategy analysis. (McCain’s only hope is somehow to win one large-population state that it now seems he will lose, etc., etc. – but we don’t need to occupy ourselves with that stuff, since either Ravn assuredly doesn’t know what he’s talking about or you and I have already read such an analysis, in English, somewhere else.)

No, it’s Jyllandsposten’s Niels Lillelund who gets into a more in-depth discussion of American electoral matters in an accompanying article entitled Farwell to Bush – whom will the intellectuals hate now?. (more…)

There is really a culture gap opening up along the fault-line of the Atlantic, but this is nothing you haven’t probably heard of already. Naturally I speak here with particular regard to the big climax, the big watershed which is coming up in ten days, the 2004 presidential election. Again, it’s exceedingly likely that you’ve heard in one form or another that John Kerry is a massively more-popular choice than George W. Bush to be US President from 2005 to 2009. (You’ll need to subscribe to or otherwise comply with the wishes of Salon.com if you want to click that link to read renowned foreign correspondent Mark Hertsgaard’s on-line exposition on that topic.)

People over here really find it mystifying why anyone would even consider voting for Bush. So the US correspondent for the Dutch NRC Handelsblad, Marc Chavannes, gamely sets out to perform a little public service for the folks back home and investigate this phenomenon. His research takes him to a recent personal presidential campaign appearance in Chocolate Town, formally known as Hershey, Pennsylvania. (Bush Stands For What I Believe – free registration to the on-line NRC Handelsblad required. By the way, for any of those who might be interested, Chavannes also maintains an NRC-sponsored Dutch-language weblog on the presidential campaign.) (more…)

The fourth and last of the debates of the 2004 presidential campaign has now come and gone. For the most part European newspapers have successfully dealt with the fact that, just like the other three, this debate actually took place from 2:00 AM to 3:30 AM their time, so that newspaper reports are popping up together with even the occasional analytical treatment already.

The Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung is among those already featuring some of that analysis, or Kommentar, and I think it is worthwhile to turn to that. (more…)

There’s an interesting analysis of Friday evening’s second Bush-Kerry debate from Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende. You get a heavy dose of the message in the very title: Good – But Not Good Enough, Bush. (more…)

“He forgot Poland” George W. Bush famously complained during that first presidential debate last week. And so John Kerry apparently did. And what about Poland, and specifically its roughly 2,500 soldiers now serving in Iraq? We’re out of there by December, 2005, no matter what happens, is the essence of what Polish defense minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski announced in an interview published yesterday in the leading Polish national newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

A pretty definitive statement, you would think. And, by the way, a resounding scoop for Gazeta, since no other on-line Polish newspaper treated Szmajdzinkski’s remarks until today, and that mostly in reaction to the splash he had made in yesterday’s interview. But unfortunately it’s not so simple as all that: Gazeta had several pieces accompanying that interview – as do other newspapers today – basically passing on a message of “don’t listen to Szmajdzinski!” from other leading Polish politicians, to include such figures as the President and Prime Minister! The situation is muddled, then, to say the least. (more…)

A great article-find for this day of the first Bush-Kerry debate! As the German newspaper Handelsblatt’s Gerald Seib puts it in the title of the latest contribution to his “American View” commentary series: How Can Anyone Vote for Bush? (more…)

Today’s foreign-press reference comes courtesy of the New York Times Sunday editorial page, which cites a recent interview I missed in France’s Le Figaro of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Vatican prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Times editors condemn Cardinal Ratzinger – who can accurately be termed the Vatican’s ideologue-in-chief, and so is certainly close to Pope John Paul II – as a “meddlesome cleric” for offering his view that Turkey is “in permanent contrast to Europe” and so does not belong as a member-state of the European Union. Perhaps mid-August is a slow period to find things to comment on, or perhaps those Times editors really are so enthusiastic about seeing Turkey join the EU, but it’s at least curious that they want to offer comment on a piece which the vast majority of their own readers cannot read themselves – readable, in fact, only by ipso facto traitorous John F. Kerry-types who know French! – and so who are dependent on the quotes and extracts that those editors are willing to reproduce for them in English. A prime case, one could think, for EuroSavant to go take a look. (more…)

John Kerry delivered his acceptance speech last Thursday night to bring the Democratic National Convention to its culmination, and the German press was certainly paying attention. But this should have been no surprise to readers of the Economist (subscription required), which this week reminds us how Germans massively dislike George W. Bush, and so are presumably very interested in the personality and prospects of the alternative candidate who can send him packing to Crawford, Texas. (That Economist article, unfortunately, also dwells on Germans’ current dislike for the US generally – but, like the country or not, they surely cannot be under the delusion that the result of November’s presidential election has no impact on them.)

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. (more…)

Day one of the 2004 Democratic National Convention is now past, and if there is a common theme to coverage in the Danish press, it’s Bill Clinton. Clinton, and to a lesser extent Hillary, continue to command fascination from audiences beyond America’s borders, so the Danish dailies lead their international coverage (although it’s never the top story of the day, sorry to have to disappoint you) with pictures of Clinton and translated quotes about how, for example, “John Kerry is a good man, who knows how to steer a ship through troubled waters” (from Politiken’s Clinton Works for a Kerry Victory).

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). (more…)

The great and the merely good – around 35,000 people in all – are now assembling for the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and among those who have arrived is the French politician Pierre Moscovici, whose last flight to the United States, on September 11, 2001, actually passed over a smoking New York City on its way to the nearest available airport. Now he has returned under what are obviously rather happier circumstances, with his purpose, as he puts it, “to bring the support of the Socialist Party” for John Kerry. (more…)

A devastating debate with Howard Dean live on TV hasn’t been enough; neither have been appeals from countless Americans, from the prominent to the obscure. But maybe a collective entreaty from some guys (mostly guys; actually, they’re uomini) with that notable “continental style” will do the trick and convince Ralph Nader to withdraw from the American presidential race. The French on-line newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur is reporting (Anti-Bush Action From Italian Deputies) that 116 members of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, “in a rare gesture,” sent a collective letter last Saturday (24 July) to presidential candidate Ralph Nader urging him to bow out. (more…)

Danish coverage of John Edwards’ selection as the Democratic vice-presidential candidate has turned out to be fairly substantive. There is even early commentary on the choice in the opinion newspaper Information, from that paper’s correspondent in Boston, MA, Martin Burcharth (Kerry Chooses a Risky Strategy). (more…)

Hey – I’ll trade you a John Edwards football card! Yes he played, during his college days at NC State. Actually, I’ll give you a free tip: if you move fast, you can print out the trading card showing the young Edwards suited up in his football uniform, but with the “John Edwards: President” logo underneath, used as promotional material during his Democratic primary campaign, which is featured on the French newspaper Libération’s best-of-the-pack article covering Edwards’ naming as the Democratic VP candidate. (more…)

The cajoling (over Iraq, of course) and the 60-year-old commemorative ceremonies are now over, and President Bush and entourage have caught Air Force One back to the States. He leaves behind, among many other things, an excellent article in the current issue of the authoritative German commentary-newspaper, Die Zeit, which his staff, at least, would have been well-advised to have studied in preparation for this visit (the article is dated June 3). Now, I know that the President doesn’t care much for foreign languages, and maybe that attitude also percolates down to those who work for him, so that that probably did not happen. But that’s OK anyway, because Jan Ross’ piece Bush and Us can also serve just as well as a post-visit dissection of the true attitudes towards George W. Bush and America in general among Europeans, beneath all the World War II-gratitude veneer. (more…)

Me, too! Me, too! So Europe is Kerry country, not least because the Democratic presidential candidate is fluent in French and can produce phrases in other European languages, reports the Economist. (Subscription required; or you can get the same message from this Washington Post survey of a ragged potpourri of English-language newspapers from around the world – from Manila, Hong Kong, Edinburgh, southern India, and the like.) Sounds like a good bandwagon for EuroSavant to hop onto, say with a look at the French press to see whether the Fifth Republic really loves the Democratic Party’s candidate as much as is claimed. (more…)

Oh, the stories that have now sprung up about presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry! Calpundit points out that, while the infamous Matt Drudge first brought some of these stories to light, “the mainstream [American] media is too responsible to report this stuff.” He’s got a couple useful links to the British press for those who would like to follow these things nonetheless (the Guardian and the Sun: the first OK, the second one of those tawdry British tabloids whose “page 3 girls” are the only thing that ever interests EuroSavant, and which therefore I do not cover for this weblog – and you also don’t get the link from me, haha!).

Well, what about the Polish press? Good stuff there, too (although still exclusively from the two leading dailies, each to be cited in this entry). I guess that makes them “irresponsible.” (Or maybe it’s all OK when you’re passing on the reported dirt about people and goings-on which are, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, “far away, and of whom you know nothing.”) (more…)

Yes, I’ve been “off-line” for a while, as my just-completed US trip went through its final, most-business-intensive phase. But, as of today, I’m back on-station in Amsterdam and prepared to plunge back fully into those national presses over here on this side of the water that I cover.

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. (more…)