Obama Speaks to Berliners, "Not As a Candidate for President"
(BERLIN, GERMANY) Barack Obama, the citizen, looked more like a rock star today at Berlin's Tiergarten Park, where he spoke to a crowd of tens of thousands of roaring fans waving American flags.
"Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world," Obama said precluding the buzz that his speech today is a campaign rally.
"Yes we can," some shouted in the crowd as Obama stood in front of the Victory Column. The Obama campaign originally wanted to have him deliver the speech at the Brandenburg Gate, the site of two former U.S. presidential speeches - JFK and Ronald Reagan. However, after considerable debate in Germany (and the U.S.), they settled on the Victory Column.
Conscious that relations with America's most ardent European supporter have grown increasingly strained since the onset of the Iraq war, Obama admitted that United States has made its share of mistakes.
"I know my country has not perfected itself," Obama said. "At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions."
However, keeping in line with goal of trying to bridge the divide between the U.S. and Europe, Obama said misconceptions run both ways and must be changed.
"In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future," he said calling for greater understanding.
On the flight to Berlin today, Obama denied that there would be parallels between his remarks today and Reagan and Kennedy speeches in Berlin decades ago; however, he was clearly alluding to Reagan's infamous "Tear down this wall" line in the speech today.
Referring to political and religious divides in the world, Obama said, "The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down."
Despite talk in the German media that the speech today would draw a crowd of up to one million, it was more like 200,000 - a massive crowd, regardless - that came to hear the presumptive Democratic nominee. A local band warmed the crowd up for over an hour before the much anticipated speech.
There was also an interesting moment for '80s music buffs. Invoking the memory of the 1983 hit, "99 Luftballons (99 Red Balloons)" by German singer Nena, someone in the crowd released a red balloon during his remarks.
The song, released at the height of Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and at a time when nuclear war movies such as "WarGames" and "The Day After" were popular, was about a nuclear holocaust that was triggered by mistake when an unnamed military mistakenly reacted to 99 balloons that were released into the air.
The song, which reached #2 in the U.S. in early 1984, ends: "If I could find a souvenir / Just to prove the world was here / And here is a red balloon / I think of you and let it go."