In at least one, mutually embarrassing way, the American and foreign media stand united Wednesday: After the New Hampshire Primary, they all have egg on their faces.
Like their U.S. counterparts, foreign journalists and editorial writers spent the post-Iowa weekend filing political obituaries on Hillary Clinton, alongside coronations of Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. Wednesday, the collective blush of chagrin is as acute in Tokyo and Berlin as it is in New York and San Francisco, Senator Clinton is back atop the foreign charts, Huckabee is all but forgotten and Obamamania has yielded to a reality trip.
If that all sounds very familiar to American ears, it's because a new and virulent form of international pack journalism has emerged in America's endless presidential campaign. Never in memory have so many reporters from so many corners of the Earth paid so much attention – and so early – to a political event beyond their own national borders. Nor has there ever been such a broad overseas consensus on what these elections mean, and (reading between the lines), how the rest of the world would like to see them end.
Put simply, it comes down to a choice between John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
STAGGERING INTEREST
The level of foreign interest in the primaries is downright staggering. The BBC and the Economist from Britain, France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel, Doha-based Al Jazeera, Japan's Mainichi Shimbun and Russia's RIA-Novosti are among scores of newspapers and press agencies that have dispatched entire teams of reporters onto the primary road, and created special sections on the U.S. elections that are updated daily.
The most notable commonality in this otherwise disparate group is its pronounced emphasis on a two-horse version of the Democratic race – so much so that the GOP results often seem little more than footnotes. After both Iowa and New Hampshire, every foreign newspaper surveyed by CBS5 World View featured enormous photos of senators Obama or Clinton on its front page, and in most the name of the Republican victor appeared only in a small subhead.
"There is no mistaking the listlessness among the (Republican) faithful," the Japan Times observed on the eve of its New Hampshire coverage. "A key category to watch is voters who consider themselves independent, an increasingly powerful bloc. Iowa suggests that they want change and look to Democrats to achieve it."
Germany and France have fielded two of the largest primary campaign teams. The candidates respective web page "appearances" in those countries, produced by a Google search as of Monday, is typical of a global pattern. Obama was the overwhelming leader, alluded to in nearly nearly 1.7 million pages in French and German. Hillary was a runaway second with 720,000, John Edwards a very distant Democratic third with less than 230,000.
Among Republicans, no candidate achieved more than a quarter of Obama's total, apart from a sudden spike to 350,000 in German and 139,000 in French for Huckabee, most of which were linked to Iowa-datelined articles asking "Who is he?" Mitt Romney came in at a total of 370,000, Rudy Giuliani at 270,000, and John McCain – who went on to win the Republican primary the Tuesday – a meager 168,000.
IF THE WORLD COULD VOTE
What the foreign press is saying, as much as how often, speaks volumes about this election. It explains, unambiguously, the media tilt toward Democrats.
Abroad, the administration of George W. Bush and his Republican White House is regarded – on the right and left alike – as an unmitigated catastrophe, marked by cynicism, the willful embrace of ignorance in foreign policy, and gross incompetence in management.
Last April, a survey conducted by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org found that large majorities of respondents around the globe now reject a leading role for the United States in international problem-solving. The study included polls in China, India, Indonesia, Russia, France, Thailand, Ukraine, Poland, Iran, Mexico, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Argentina, Peru, Armenia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, representing 56 percent of the Earth's population.
Whether these findings please or infuriate Americans, they color most foreign perspectives on the current presidential race.
"After the bad years of President George W. Bush, many around the world are hoping that America will return to virtue and peace," according to Der Spiegel, one of the most respected publications in Europe.
"At a school regional Speech Contest, circa 1958-9, I quoted from Abraham Lincoln 'With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives me to see the right,'" a South African wrote in a blog exchange published by Al-Jazeera. "What has happened to that America, I ask?"
Hence the disproportionate attention to two candidates, both Democrats, who invoke the legacies of two revered former presidents: John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton.
If it is hard to overstate the fierce hostility that Bush provokes among foreigners, it is even harder to exaggerate their affection for the memory of Kennedy and their respect for the more recent performance of Clinton.
In my travels as a correspondent over the past 35 years, I found tattered magazine portraits of JFK hanging on the walls of thatched huts in Asia and Africa, and countless books about him on the shelves of Russians, Eastern Europeans and Africans. The public park in the small Italian town where I now live is named for JFK and his brother Bobby. People still quote his words, translated into their own languages, to visiting Americans. They are still moved by them.
Bill Clinton — who danced rings around a Republican Congress presided over an America that was the economic and technological wonder of the world during the 1990s, balanced its budget, brought the war to an end in ex-Yugoslavia and came painfully close to forging peace between Israel and the Palestinians — would be handily re-elected President if he could run and foreigners could vote for him.
Together, Kennedy and Clinton symbolize two hallmarks of the American character that have captivated the rest of the planet since the time of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Eloquent idealism and sound, practical good sense — the insistent belief in the possibility of a better future, and a fierce determination to get things done.
It doesn't take much political acumen to divine which of the current candidates most clearly represent these virtues today – even without the fascinating prospect that a black or a woman might be elected president of a country long viewed as a bastion of racism and backwardness.
POETRY OR PROSE?
Hillary isn't Bill, as she herself consistently points out. But competence is unmistakeably her strong suit, and beyond the borders of the United States she carries the promise of an America that can once again achieve difficult goals, and persuade others to follow her lead.
When Clinton appeared on television Iowa, "the cameras focused on the people surrounding her. Former president Bill Clinton; his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright; his favorite general, Wesley Clark," wrote Shmuel Rosner Chief U.S. Correspondent of the Israeli daily Haaretz. "To the Israeli viewer, the image sent a message of reassurance: This is who we are, the nice people from the 1990s."
Germans "would prefer to hand one of the most important jobs in the democratic world to someone who does more than just spread feel-good sentiment, who has a few more scars, whose career was built on measu
rable decisions," the Süddeutsche Zeitung editorialized. "Hillary Clinton would be the right candidate for that – even if she seems boring compared to Obama."
But the contrast between boredom and inspiration does little justice to the far-flung debate launched by the 2008 American election, or to the unprecedented intensity with which it is being followed.
"If Obama becomes president, there would certainly be impact all over the globe," a viewer in Nepal told Al Jazeera. "The mindset, the way of thinking, his view of the world… is certain to be different. He would understand the pain of those with less authority and power…"
For Rome's La Repubblica, Obama is il Kennedy nero – "the black Kennedy" – while Milan's rival Corriere della Sera calls him "the Lincoln of our times." Elsewhere overseas, the senator from Illinois has been favorably compared to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the late German Chancellor Willy Brandt, the patron saint of peaceful coexistence and reconciliation for Europeans.
"Obama embodies America's yearning for political reconciliation at home and abroad," agrees Der Spiegel, even as it worries about his vagueness on some issues. "Americans are tired of the current administration's aggressive rhetoric. They want reconciliation, not war. They want a harmonious society, not a divided one."
The rest of the world sees it remarkably the same way, and like American Democrats, is torn by a choice between the heart and the head – between the hope embodied in youthful eloquence, and the longing for a steady hand. "You campaign in poetry but you govern in prose," Senator Clinton famously commented, arguing that her own steely resolve and experience will carry the day.
But "you cannot, in American politics this year, cut straight to the prose," counters the BBC's Justin Webb. "She still needs to find the poetry somehow, somewhere."
– Frank Viviano – barganews staff reporter – World View CBS5