Obama Asserts His Americanness
Barack Obama will appear this week before the American public in a new role: as an American abroad. And he's putting the stress squarely on "American."
In a presidential campaign where the Democrat faces an especially intense variation of a familiar Republican assault — that he is, in some sense, not "one of us," the trip abroad represents an opportunity for Obama to assert that he is, rather, not one of them.
He began with stops in which he has been pictured largely in the company of American soldiers. In Kuwait, he examined military vehicles and signed autographs for soldiers on a military base. The first images out of Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he landed after a brief visit to a base in Kuwait, show him with two uniformed members of the military, three other American officials, and a large statue of a bald eagle.
"People back here are going to look at those pictures and they're going to see him celebrated and welcomed as an American and as a representative of the United States," said Bob Shrum, the chief adviser in 2004 to John F. Kerry, who was caricatured by aides to President Bush as, literally, looking French.
Officially, Obama's travel, culminating in a planned speech in Berlin, has no political significance. The visits to Iraq and Afghanistan are formally congressional information-gathering sessions, undertaken with two other senators; Obama has cast the European leg as similarly informational.
The star power of the press in tow, however, makes clear the stakes are high. It has also brought even more attention to the Iraqi prime minister's newfound support for Obama’s plan to withdraw from Iraq in 16 months.
"This trip is not at all a political trip or a rally of any sort," said Obama aide Robert Gibbs. "It is a series of substantive meetings with our friends and our allies to talk about the challenges we face and the national security demands for the 21st century."
But the trip is rich with political symbolism. It coincides with an advertising campaign touting both Obama's foreign policy vision and his Americanness.
European leaders, including several heads of state, have lined up to meet with the senator, who's carefully weighed which meetings to take (he won’t be meeting with the French Socialist party, for instance, despite press reports to the contrary).
His popularity in Europe, unmatched among American politicians, could hurt him politically, however, if rapturous foreign crowds are seen as emblematic of his purported foreignness.
"This is a constant Republican theme: not one of us," said Democratic strategist Paul Begala.
The assault on Obama's American identity is at the heart of a viral whispering campaign that has called into question, variously, his religious faith and his patriotism, and which has made much of his Kenyan father and his having been raised for five years in Indonesia.
Those assaults have worked their way in from the political fringes, closer and closer to the center. John McCain recently adopted the slogan "Country First," which at least resonates with the suggestion that Obama places his country lower than that. And the Republican National Committee last week responded to questions about a Washington state Republican Party ad directly impugning the patriotism of Obama's wife with an unrelated attack on Obama. (McCain, who was silent on the recent ad, has condemned similar attacks in the past.)
While the clear central political goal of Obama's trip is to shore up his foreign policy credentials — an area in which he trails John McCain in polls — concerns about the whisper campaign seem to be informing the trip's symbolism and set pieces.
"If it turns into a political rally or if it looks like Obama is arguably siding with interests that are not completely supportive of Ameria, it could well be counterproductive for him," said the political consultant Doug Schoen, who advised former President Bill Clinton as well as New York's then-Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Conversely, contrasting himself with those interests could be an opportunity.
Obama did lose one very American piece of European symbolism when German Chancellor Angela Merkel effectively scuttled the suggestion that Obama would visit — like Presidents Kennedy and Reagan — the Brandenburg Gate that formerly divided East and West Germany.
He will speak instead in front of Berlin's Victory Tower (likely familiar to some Americans from Wim Wenders' 1987 art house hit "Wings of Desire.")
But Obama aides have signaled that he will use that speech not only to embrace Europe, but to make clear who he represents.
Obama foreign policy adviser Susan Rice told London's Telegraph Friday that anti-Bush sentiment had given Europeans an "easy out" from supporting American foreign policy.
Obama's policy, she said, would mean that "we in the United States will have to do our part; but Europe will have to do its part, too.
There can be no free riders if this is going to be an effective partnership," Rice said.