"It's not Obama, it's the System"

The Germans and their Obmania

Germans are not disappointed by President Obama, but rather the American system. This is the result of a TV-debate broadcasted today in Das Erste. With all the attention the US election gathers this side of the Atlantic one could almost expect to be asked to vote for a candidate this November.

Four well-known journalists were asked to take stock of Obama’s tenure at the White house. Melinda Crane, Olivia Schoeller, Gerhard Spörl and Clemens Wergin were invited to comment on the good and the bad, the disastrous debate, the healthcare promise and the Guantanamo fiasco and after 60 minutes they reached a consensus, the once celebrated messiah turned out to be just a human president, boxed in by Washington policies and the Bush legacy.

            Back in 2008 when Obama moved into the Oval Office he had a lot on his plate, Bush’s two wars, a national debt of ten trillion an counting, bad banks and economic crisis and a huge number of unemployed voters. He still thinks America can make it work and Germans are still hung up over the question if Obama’s attitude towards Germany has cooled because back in 2008 he was not allowed to deliver his speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate. In terms of stupid things the media can speculate about, this ranks up there with Fox News, worrying about a 2007Obama-tape, where he commented on the racial component of poverty in the region around New Orleans post-Catarina. The night before the first TV debate the resurfaced tape supposedly outs the president as racist. A lot of German media commentators, those four in the Presse Club today included, agree, during the last two years of Obama’s presidency the relationship between Germany and the USA is best categorised as being united in mutual annoyance, as the German magazine Der Spiegel titled. And Germany had such high hopes in 2009, Bush had left silently, and this new one approached Europe openly. While Der Spiegel speculated in 2011 the cooled relations are in fact due to the lack of a personal bond between Merkel and Obama, the Presse Club Quartet argued Obama had no personal biographical connection with Europe, quoting from his autobiography.

ARD editor and political commentator, Ulrich Deppendorf disagrees, for Merkel the friendship with America is still top priority, even though Obama dared to criticize her hesitant crisis management. The lawyer and the physicist allegedly still talk on the phone. In fact, according to him, the president and the chancellor are made of the same cloth, praising each other, despite their different political strategies. The Republican ticket is an unknown variable for Merkel, and especially economic questions will continue to test the German-American friendship, if Romney should become president in November. Calling Germany a socialist country does not necessarily warm Merkel to the Republican candidate.

            The choice 2012 opposes the current president with the millionaire who wants to return to Bush’s policy of favouring the haves and the have mores where 47 % of Americans today are just dependants on federal charity, negligible dead weight. That was the tone of Romney’s campaign until last week, when the TV debate changed it all, when Mitt Romney paddled back. Suddenly he appears to be against tax cuts, changing his position with the wind, yet again, but the US commentators agree, Romney won the debate hands down. His “theatrical aggression” paid off and could gloss over facts, that are really none, like the president’s supposed $ 716 billion cuts in Medicare or the claim Obama wasted $ 90 billion on so-called green jobs when half of them have already gone out of business. Both statements are blatant falsehoods but Romney’s aggressive rhetoric and the easy smile could win him Brownie points, especially faced with a lethargic and disarmed Obama. Seemingly over night, Obama has given up on the relentless urgency and passion of the 2007 campaign.

Maybe Germans just don’t understand the drama of the procedure? Suddenly the one debate can win the election and all the other public speeches are just forgotten? America today is a deeply divided nation, even more so than four years ago, when it seemed the election of Obama, the first Afro-American president, would prove America as a nation is despite financial crisis capable of moving forward. The dark chapter of racism was finally and the de jure equality of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1968) was realized in a de facto equality. In hindsight the prophesised paradise after the second coming didn’t change so much for the people in the black city centres and the white suburbia. The media makes the candidate and here, like there elections are won not with the stronger arguments but with better campaign managers, twitter users and YouTube videos.