I was checking the German newspaper sites to see what they thought of Barack Obama’s speech today. The first thing I noticed about the Berliner Zeitung‘s site was the lack of Obama hype on the main page. No photo, just a line of text. When I clicked on the story here’s the first line, by my translation:
Citizen Obama has spoken — and said nothing new.
The writer said Obama strung together some phrases from his campaign speeches and said he appeard as a U.S. citizen as well as a citizen of the world.
The Berliner Morgenpost was a bit more enthusiastic. Obama is the top story on their Web site.
On this side of the pond, Scott at Power Line had the best name for the speech. He called it the “sermon to the Germans.”
Meanwhile, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour reported an underwhelming response to the speech:
Well, I don’t think they were disappointed, and I’m not sure that they were thoroughly satisfied. I did ask some people as they were leaving what they thought. Everybody said good, good. But I was surprised that there wasn’t this sort of euphoria afterwards, given how many people had come to listen and how much it had been anticipated.
More quick video dissection here.
UPDATE 7/25: James Lileks sees parallels to Reagan:
There is, in spots, a wall between the US and Mexico; are we to expect he will make a campaign stop at the border crossing, and ask Mr. Bush to Tear Down This Wall? In a sense that would make him the heir to Reagan – in the same sense Paris Hilton is heir to Conrad.
Heh.
