Meh! German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t seem impressed by President Obama as they head to a state dinner in Berlin on Thursday. (AFP/Getty Images)
First he mistook Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer for a soul singer, calling him Jeffrey Osborne instead of George. Then he explained to an audience in sectarian Belfast that, in the interests of religious harmony, Catholics ought not to have their own schools. Finally, sweating in the hot sun and without his TelePrompTer, he stumbled through a nearly incoherent speech at the Brandenburg Gate that almost nobody attended.
Throw in the cold shoulders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia President Vladimir Putin, the ridicule of the British press (“just another lame duck”) and the disappointment of the German media, which had expected another walking-on-water moment like candidate Obama’s 2008 speech at the Victory Column, and it was not a successful foreign adventure for President Obama.
Too bad he needed one.
When the going gets tough, American presidents often get going — overseas, where they can bask in their role as commander-in-chief, strutting their stuff before foreign dignitaries and brass bands for the benefit of the folks back home.
Richard Nixon hit the road at the height of Watergate, traveling to the Middle East, Europe and the Soviet Union during the fateful summer of 1974. Embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky mess throughout 1998, Bill Clinton fled Washington for Africa, Europe, the UK, China, Russia, Ireland, Japan, Korea and Israel.
It didn’t do them much good: Nixon resigned in August 1974 and Clinton was impeached in December 1998, although he escaped conviction by the Senate two months later.
So it was no surprise to see Obama boarding Air Force One for an international jaunt of his own. Bombarded by scandals ranging from Benghazi to the IRS’s war on the Tea Party to the National Security Agency’s wholesale surveillance of the American public, the president scooted off to Northern Ireland and Germany in the hopes of recapturing some of his 2008 campaign magic.
The political strategy was transparent. Far more comfortable waving from Air Force One and giving canned speeches than wrangling with Congress, Obama has kept his campaign machine in full working order, aiming to hold the Senate and perhaps retake the House in next year’s elections.
But with GOP congressional investigators circling, Obama badly needed a win abroad to maintain his domestic popularity. Like Nixon and Clinton, he hoped to keep the wolves at bay by looking presidential.
This trip didn’t do it. With a malfunctioning TelePrompTer, he stumbled over the surname of Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit (it’s Vo-ver-ite) and rambled on about nuclear disarmament, global warming, the rise of the oceans, “peace with justice” and 18th century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant before an invited audience of only about 4,500 — a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who turned out to see him in 2008.
At the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, Putin bluntly informed Obama that “of course our opinions do not coincide” on the crisis in Syria, while in Berlin Merkel criticized the NSA’s spying program, saying, “there has to be proportionality” between security and personal freedom.
And nobody thinks that Obama’s long-held fixation on reducing US and Russian missiles to about 1,000 apiece (roughly the same as in 1954) has the slightest chance of happening — Putin is happily upgrading his missile force under Obama’s last treaty with Russia. Plus, the crazy North Koreans already have nukes, and the Iranians will get them any day now.
In short, the president, his speechwriters and his advance team (which both let him down so badly in Berlin) are going to have to do better than warmed-over rhetoric and been-there, done-that photo ops in front of European monuments if they hope to turn around his sagging poll numbers.
Of course, better stagecraft might not do the job. It’s possible that folks have simply caught on to him, and the act is wearing is thin. The president himself said it best when he explained the absence of his wife and children from the Berlin dais by observing, “The last thing they want to do is to listen to another speech from me.”
Judging from the world’s reaction, they’re not alone.