{"id":1766,"date":"2008-06-11T06:44:47","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T06:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-06-11T06:46:43","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T06:46:43","slug":"a_democratic_so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1766","title":{"rendered":"A ‘Democratic Socialist’ on Obama and Exceptionalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leftier-than-me professor Jeff Weintraub swings the bat<\/a> for the US on his own blog and on HuffPo<\/a>, making the same point I did (more eloquently and with more research) about European racism and Obama:<\/p>\n

But having followed the European media with some care since my arrival in Vienna on June 1, I have seen very little acknowledgement of one inconvenient complicating reality. Obama, or someone with Obama’s social background and political style, would have a hard time getting elected dog-catcher in any of these European countries, let alone President or Prime Minister (or, in Germany, Chancellor).<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are various reasons why that’s true. Despite the swooning praises of Obama from the western European chattering classes, the reality is that someone in their own countries with Obama’s political style would actually turn them off. A European candidate with Obama’s message of hope and idealism would make a lot of European journalists, intellectuals, and politicians roll their eyes. And in western European countries with established party systems, it would be almost impossible for a political outsider like Obama to vault over a party hierarchy so dramatically.<\/p>\n

\nBut the most fundamental reasons run deeper. A number of European countries have elected women to high political office, even the highest. (Score that one for the Europeans, at least some of them.) But as Jerry Karabel and I pointed out, none of them has ever elected a non-white person of any extraction to its highest political office–that is, head of state or head of government. (Actually, no predominantly-white country in the world has ever elected a black person to its highest political office.)<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He makes another point in passing:<\/p>\n

Along with the world-wide impact of this year’s US election drama in general, which shouldn’t be discounted, the Obama factor in particular probably helps explain developments like these:<\/p>\n

<\/i>A BBC global poll released in April showed that views of the U.S. had improved in 11 of 23 countries from a year ago, including a big gain in France. A recent poll for ARD-TV showed that German confidence in the U.S. soared by 21 percentage points to 53% from last year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I don’t doubt that the thought of another Clinton or Obama in office warms the hearts of the Europeans lots, I can’t help but wonder the extent to which the drumbeat of good news out of Iraq – oh, sorry, the silence of the media on Iraq – combined with the realization that the European countries have some work to do on the Islamist issue, and that it isn’t the fevered product of Doug Feith’s imagination – might not have something to do with it.<\/p>\n

They are certainly no more pro-war in Iraq than they were before. But the war in Iraq shows signs of quieting to the level of the tolerable Bosnian crisis. And that might just be livable to the typical Parisian.<\/p>\n

And, yes, they might get eight more years of Bill Clinton or eight years of Barak, the most European of candidates not remotely electable by, you know, actual Europeans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“[Obama]…would have a hard time getting elected dog-catcher in any of these European countries…”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}