Obamamania

Jim Hoagland suggests that Obamamania is not necessarily a worldwide phenomenon. I agree. So far it is only pockets of western Europe going berserk over the one-term Senator. China, India and Japan all remain lukewarm to a change in administration that has treated them well over the last 8 years:

In Asia, trade is the biggest dividing line of the campaign and works in McCain's favor. Both China and Japan have settled into a comfortable relationship with Bush and give his administration high marks for its Asia policy and for promoting free trade. They would expect McCain to continue this pattern and fear that victorious Democrats would disrupt it, I was told in Tokyo. India's political leaders seem to share those concerns.

So why has Western Europe gone so gaga over BO. Well, Hoagland thinks it's down to dissatisfaction with our own leaders:

Obama also benefits from general disappointment among Europeans with their own leaders, who stumble under a seemingly endless European Union constitutional crisis, uncertain economies and personality tics of various sorts. Vicarious trans-Atlantic change will do if the real thing is not available locally.

Hmm...I'm not so sure this is the reason.  David Pryce-Jones on National Review thinks it has more to do with anti-Americanism:

All this Obama mania is only the flip side of anti-Americanism. They’re all hoping for a president who will dismantle everything the United States stands for, and so prove them to be the intellectual and moral superiors they think they are.

Yeah, I think this is getting warmer but still not quite hitting the mark. Right now, things aren't going well. The economy is in the tank. Fuel is at its most expensive. Iraq is better, Afghanistan is worse (apparently), and we only have a couple of years before the north pole disappears into the Atlantic and the world freezes or boils (I forget which). And the reason for all this calamity? America. More specifically, George Bush's America. So yes, we are disillusioned with our own leaders and their stumbling policies but we are constantly reminded that America is to blame, that the maniacal consumerism of right-wing neocons is, at the core, responsible for it all.  Our economies lie in ruin because of American greed, because America let its sub-prime market go wild. Our fuel is more expensive than ever before, not because of our 60% tax but because of America's thirst for foreign oil. That's the same thirst that made it invade Iraq and Afghanistan. And that's also the same thirst that's destroying the ozone layer and killing Al Gore's planet.

Is all this fair? No. Because we get far more from America than it takes from us. And even although we know that, we don't like to acknowledge it so instead we blame a single person, and thus celebrate heartily at the prospect of an antithetic successor, whomever that may be. Obama is the perfect European candidate too. We can celebrate our sophistication and restore our supercilious contempt for a racist America who is too afraid to elect a black man (because, of course, our government leaders represent the vanguard of social equality and open-mindedness).

Yep, Europe loves Obama as much as they probably should; he fits a pretty good model of European liberalism--except for his position on abortion which is quite extreme compared to most European countries. Either way, Obama is everything George Bush isn't. But, if elected, Obama too will quickly become the face of an America we all seem to love to hate. Speaking as a Brit, Americans shouldn't care what Europeans think, as much as Europeans shouldn't (and don't) care what Americans think. We need to be able to solve our own problems, regardless of the political persuasion of the person in the Oval office. That's what international diplomacy is for, right?