Barack Obama’s handlers had obviously wanted the candidate’s
appearance in Germany to invoke comparisons to presidents John F.
Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
Yet their original choice of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate — venue
of Reagan’s historic 1987 “tear down this wall” speech — was
rejected by Germans who noted that Obama is merely a candidate,
rather than an actual president, and objected to the Democrat’s
appropriation of their symbol of national unity for a political
campaign event.
Foiled in their original quest for an iconic backdrop, Team
Obama accepted as an alternative speech location the plaza
adjoining the Siegessaule (“Victory Column”) about a mile west of
the Brandenburg Gate. Alas for the apostles of Hope, the symbolism
of this site has proven “problematic,” as a spokesman for Angela
Merkel’s Christian Democrats
told Der Spiegel.
History-minded Germans point out that the Siegessaule was
erected to commemorate Prussia’s 19th-century victories over
Austria, France and Denmark. Furthermore, the current location of
the monument was chosen by none other than Adolf Hitler, as part of
his ambitious plans for the architectural renovation of the German
capital.
Team Obama’s difficulty in finding a suitable site for his
Berlin speech is unlikely to get much attention from the TV news
anchors traveling with the candidate this week. Yet it highlights
the fundamental problem of Obama overseas excursion: It is a purely
symbolic gesture from a campaign that increasingly seems more
interested in symbols than substance.
IF THE BRAIN TRUST at Hope HQ can’t be bothered to study German
history, perhaps they should try thinking of Obama in terms of TV
history.
In 1977, when the 1950s-themed comedy Happy Days was in
its fourth season, the writers were constantly seeking new ways to
highlight the show’s popular bad-boy character Arthur “Fonzie”
Fonzarelli.
Originally a peripheral character in the program in which Ron
Howard reprised his starring role in the 1973 hit film American
Graffiti, Henry Winkler as the Fonz quickly upstaged his
co-stars to become a cultural icon on Happy Days.
The show’s writers soon turned Fonzie into an all-purpose plot
device, a sort of deus ex machina in a leather coat. And it was in
this capacity that, in the climax of a special three-episode
sequence in 1977, Fonzie performed his famous ski-jump over a shark
tank.
“Jump the shark” has since entered the lexicon to describe that
inevitable point at which any pop-culture phenomenon becomes
absurdly passe and begins to decline — a watershed that Obama’s
presidential campaign may cross before he returns from his weeklong
overseas itinerary.
Before Obama’s departure, Charles Krauthammer asked of the Democrat’s
desire to speak at the Brandenburg Gate, “Who is Obama
representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit
appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop?”
Noting other evidence of Obama’s “elevated opinion of himself”
— including last month’s flap over the candidate’s personalized
presidential seal — Krauthammer asked whether there has
“ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his
estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime
achievements?”
PUBLIC CONSIDERATION of such questions will likely increase due to
the lavish media attention Obama’s foreign venture has attracted.
He took the news anchors of all three major broadcast networks with
him, ensuring a week of saturation coverage and causing many to
note the media’s apparent infatuation with the Democrat.
Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz observed on his CNN “Reliable
Sources” program Sunday that none of the network anchors chose to
travel with Republican Sen. John McCain on any of his three foreign
trips since he clinched the GOP nomination. The media, Kurtz said,
“seem to me to be covering Obama as if he were already
president.”
Such excessive coverage could be enough in itself to cause a
backlash, but Obama faces an enormous risk should he commit a faux
pas on foreign soil. Calling the trip an “overseas gamble,”
Jeff Greenfield of CBS said the presence of so
many reporters in Obama’s entourage “makes the possibility of a
misstep that much more dangerous.”
And what, after all, is the purpose of his international tour?
John McCormick of the Chicago Tribune called it an “effort to look presidential on the
world stage,” while CNN said it was “aimed at bolstering his foreign policy
credentials.” Furthermore, many in Europe have apparently succumbed
to Obamamania, and the Democrat’s campaign team clearly hopes that
televised scenes of cheering foreign crowds will convey the idea
that their candidate can restore U.S. prestige abroad.
CAN A POLITICIAN’S “foreign policy credentials” be boosted by a
single week of travel? Will the sight of a Democrat surrounded by
adoring Europeans automatically translate into increased popularity
among American voters? This seems to be the belief of Obama’s
handlers.
If they’re right, this week’s excursion will finally create a
decisive shift in public opinion toward Obama, ending the stagnant
period of narrow- to-nonexistent leads he’s shown in recent national
polls.
On the other hand, if his media-saturated sojourn produces no
definite and enduring gain in the polls, Team Obama may look back
on this trip as a costly waste of time, money and effort that might
better have been expended campaigning back home.
In the worst-case scenario — a gaffe or blunder that exposes
the Democrat to criticism or ridicule — this overseas odyssey
could go down in history as Obama’s equivalent of that fateful 1988
tank ride by Michael Dukakis.
While Obama has far more charm than Dukakis, what made the
image of Dukakis in that tank so potent was that
it showed the Democrat straining to seem what he so obviously was
not — a credible candidate for Commander-in-Chief. It was the
transparent phoniness of the gesture that hurt.
Often described as a political “rock star,” Obama has benefited
thus far from the kind of celebrity treatment more becoming a
pop-culture sensation than a mere politician.
Pop fads have a way of suddenly fading, however, even in their
moment of triumph. Fonzie cleared the shark tank, after all. Obama
might not be so lucky.
