Today, on CSPAN, Frederick Kempe, President of the Atlantic Council of U.S.* said that there was a tremendous amount of interest in Europe with our primaries. He said that Europe was in love with Barack Obama - because after the disastrous Bush administration, they were hopeful that a new spirit of cooperation would begin and that Obama was the one they thought could bring this about.
Earlier this year, Kempe wrote in
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=acC1HxP.hspE<snip>
Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama were all that Europeans wanted to talk about in the hallways and at the dinners of the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy over the weekend.
The surprise in my unscientific survey of these defense- policy wonks, from cabinet ministers to professors, is that Obama is their runaway favorite. This is the case even though Obama, unlike McCain and Clinton, has never spoken here, and few here know what his foreign policies might be.
Perhaps that's the point: Europeans want U.S. change even more than most Americans -- and his candidacy offers more of it.
Most Europeans tend to favor Democrats, but never has their dislike for Republicans been as great as it is for George W. Bush. Reasons include his early dismissal of their climate- change concerns (since altered), his disregard for multilateral diplomacy on Iraq and other issues (since revised), and his Texas drawl and swagger (well, you can't change everything).
Thus Senator Joe Lieberman, who led the U.S. delegation in Munich, felt compelled after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates's keynote speech to emphasize that all the presidential candidates would press Europeans to do more fighting and dying in Afghanistan or risk NATO's decay. That followed carping by German members of parliament displeased with Gates for a leaked letter pleading with allies to do more in the restive Afghan south.
What bubbles underneath such mutual recriminations is an emerging hope that the next U.S. president might start a new conversation about how to renew and reshape Atlanticism through inspirational American leadership.
That's what lies behind the Obama preference. European policy insiders are uneasy about McCain, a conference regular who is blunt about Europe's need to improve its game. They also are cool about Clinton, though her husband was a huge hit in Europe.
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Mission of Atlantic Council: To promote constructive U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community in meeting the international challenges of the 21st century.)