The New York Times' chic, internationalist, center-left columnist Roger Cohen was rhapsodizing a few weeks ago on Barack Obama, and how the adulation the senator received from many Europeans couldn't possibly hurt him politically:
"Four years ago, with post 9/11 nationalist sentiment still running high, John Kerry had to hide the fact he spoke French and had French relatives. Republicans liked to mock the then Democratic candidate by suggesting he began rallies with a “Bonjour.” That anti-Gallic, freedom-fries fever has run its course. It’s exhausted, as are many of the jingoistic elements of the conservative, Republican wave that has been the dominant force in U.S. politics since Nixon....What I think this means for Obama is that French or European adulation for him is no longer a political problem. It cannot be associated by the likes of Karl Rove with wimpy Euro appeasement and “socialism.” If anything, Americans are looking to European health care and environmental measures as possible models."
Really? I guess that explains Obama's rather dizzying drop in the presidential polls ever since he went to Europe!
We'll leave Cohen's dismissal of conservative concerns about Europeans and their views as "jingoistic" for another time (except to say that when Americans hold a foreign policy view that the liberal elites do not like, they always trot out the word "jingoistic." Guess it makes them feel better.)
