Last week I pointed out an article authored by a British academic, addressing the British public about the errs of voting for John McCain, if Britons were to take to the American polls.
Also last week a French academic authored an article about the US Presidential candidates, this time addressing the American public on which candidate Europeans want to see in the Oval Office.
The author is Dominique Moisi, founder and senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relationsand currently a professor at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw.
Moisi has great things to say about all three candidates:
“The human and intellectual qualities of the three remaining candidates are even viewed with some envy on this side of the Atlantic, where you can hear statements such as: “Could we borrow just one of your candidates?” Many Europeans feel all three candidates are superb, and that, contrast to previous elections, America is suffering from an embarrassment of riches.”
He briefly explains how Europeans’ support for the candidates breaks down: “For these Europeans [who believe in the American ‘model,’] Barack Obama campaigning under the banner of “hope,” is the ideal choice to restore, as if by magic, America's soft power. After all, he himself incarnates the American dream.
But some Europeans prefer Hillary Clinton or even John McCain, because they are apprehensive about the consequences for America's European partners of a more restrained and less experienced president. They worry about not only competence, but also the old trans-Atlantic issue of “burden sharing.” The implicit question behind some European reservations about Obama may be formulated in one question: “Will we have to do more in Afghanistan and beyond?”
In his conclusion Moisi comes back to Obama: “The best America for Europe and the world is a confident America, one that sheds its culture of fear and rediscovers the roots of its culture of hope. This is Obama's America.”
Moisi has been an Obama-bakcer from the beginning; back in January he authored an article titled “Vote Barack Obama a global candidate for a global age.”
Moisi also seems quite comfortable describing France and the United States to each other. In 1998 he authoredan interesting article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled “The Trouble with France.” Here's the summary:
“The French always seem to be opposing the United States on some issue or other. They coddle Saddam Hussein and denounce American “cultural imperialism.” Why is France so difficult to deal with? It is, quite simply, in a bad mood, unsure of its place and status in a new world. The French are jealous of America, which seems to run the world; afraid of globalization, which threatens to erode their culture; and ambivalent about European unification, which might drown out their voice. France must meet these challenges while struggling with a cumbersome statist economy and a rising extreme right. To do it all, France must transcend itself.”
For an update on how Moisi views France's progress transcending itself, read this article he authored for the Guardian.
In this article, Moisi comments on the significance of the relatively new French President's election for French foreign policy: “Sarkozy's victory will not make a huge difference for the world beyond Europe. While [former French President] Chirac took a keen interest in world affairs, Sarkozy, by both inclination and political calculus, will concentrate, at least initially – and in the absence of a major international crisis – on internal matters. Even in transatlantic relations, change will be more a matter of style than content.”
Compared to the article Moisi's authored last week, he has much higher expectations for the American than the French President. After declaring that the US is “Obama's nation,” he emphasizes: “Of course the greater your expectations are, the greater the risk of disappointment. But, after eight years of America's self-imposed isolation under Bush, it is a risk worth taking.”
