Barack Obama’s just-completed overseas tour was much more of a communications program – a political campaign in miniature – than it was a policy-making enterprise. Sure, he hammered out some agreements at the G20 economic summit in London, and there were probably some discussions of addressing the world’s security concerns at the NATO meeting in Strasbourg, France. But, not accidentally, the President seemed to be focused more on winning over his counterparts and the publics they lead. So how did he do?
That’s a question we put to Fleishman-Hillard’s Public Affairs network, and here are a few observations.
Pat Cleary of FH Washington, D.C., thinks President Obama has more distance to travel in capturing the trust of other world leaders. “It was hard to tell through the gauze of gushing and un-critical press coverage,” Pat writes. “It appeared that he established the fact that he’s not President Bush. No doubt the G-19 are saying, ‘Yeah, we knew that – what else you got?’ The real answer – the real work – will play out over the months and years ahead. Case in point: The G20 Summit buzz was wrecked with a bucket of ice water in the form of the UN Security Council refusing to back the U.S. on North Korea on Sunday. The President will slowly discover that international leadership and international diplomacy is hard and require skills beyond ‘change we can believe in.’”
“President Obama came to Europe, but he didn’t come to EUrope,” writes Michael Stanton-Geddes of FH Brussels. “So, President Obama came to Europe, but you wouldn’t know it in Brussels. Place de Luxembourg, the EU capital’s favorite watering hole, was buzzing when Hilary Clinton came and spoke in the European Parliament last month, and there was plenty of chatter last week about Bill Clinton’s visit. However, Obama’s visit was met with… silence. Was it because everyone has left Brussels to return home for Easter? Or are the transients of Brussels truly insulted? How would the man that the European Parliament has so idolized and mimicked not pay due respect to Brussels?
“President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering had to visit Prague to meet President Obama,” Stanton-Geddes continues. “While this makes sense to EU-philes, as the Czech Republic is currently ‘President’ of the EU, it doesn’t help overcome the notion that the real power still resides in national capitals. The media dutifully performed their task with plenty of photos and headlines about Obama. But by jumping from London to Strasbourg/Kehl to Prague and then Ankara, Obama has left 785 distinctly disappointed Members of European Parliament.
“And there is one other point to make. Obama’s support for Turkey’s European Union membership, whatever the rationale, has only further confused Brussels. Turkey’s membership application has been off the agenda for a while, definitively since France elected Nicolas Sarkozy President in May 2007. If Obama made friends in Turkey, he didn’t do himself any favors in Brussels.”
Silvio Marcacci of FH Washington, D.C. thinks that “Obama’s European trip is summed up in three words: smart first steps. In one week, he began to repair strained relations with traditional allies, made strategic overtures to Russia, Turkey, and the Muslim world, and shoehorned disparate international voices into a global economic recovery plan. His trip has exceeded expectations, and Americans agree: a CNN survey published on Monday shows 61 percent of Americans believe he accomplished a ‘great deal’ or a ‘fair deal’ during the trip, while 79 percent think other countries will now view the U.S. more favorably.”
I’m with Silvio on this, and think that Obama advisor David Axelrod (who probably played a big role in orchestrating this week of public diplomacy) put it right when he told reporters a few days ago, “You plant, you cultivate, you harvest. Over time, the seeds that were planted here are going to be very, very valuable.” This is just the beginning of a long journey.
No one should have expected that Obama would get everything he wanted from all the countries he engaged with. In fact, he didn’t. The Germans and the French didn’t even begin to heed his call for them to increasing their level of stimulus spending domestically, for example. Also, some commentators dinged him for affecting little change in the status of the world’s nuclear disarmament (after all, as Pat says above, the North Koreans launched a test missile within hours of his speech on this very subject). But no person could expect every implicated country to suddenly change its policies just because Obama said so. But we have to begin somewhere. As Axelrod said in mockery of Obama’s critics, “Why didn’t the waters part, the sun shine, and all ills of the world disappear because President Obama came to Europe this week?” Let’s keep our expectations realistic.
Judging from the throngs and, yes, Pat, fawning news coverage by overseas media, there’s little question that Obama made some progress in using his personal appeal to regain some of the good will America lost in Europe and elsewhere over the last few years. His self-effacing, forthright approach in public appearances during his trip appeared to be a refreshing contrast to what countries perceived from his predecessor. And where he expressed policy disagreements (such as with economic policy and when he urged the EU to accept Turkey as a member), he may have rankled some, but not alienated them entirely (though time will tell). Even if he showed up some of his counterparts by expressing his disagreements publicly, they can’t accuse him of the sort of my-way-or-the-highway approach that President George W. Bush was known for.
And there were no significant mistakes, not even Michelle Obama’s hugging (a mere arm touch, really) of Queen Elizabeth. Come on, who can criticize her for that? Thank goodness, too, we didn’t see President Obama giving Angela Merkel a back massage.
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