Wrist Shots

“You have a very strange inauguration process,” my waiter said as he placed the cup of aromatic Dutch coffee before me.
Like the coffee, he, too, was Dutch but spoke in a proper British accent, a product of the teachers from the United Kingdom who taught him English as a third language.
“One day Mr. Bush is one of the most powerful men in the world,” he observed as a fire flickered off the dark wood in the small cafe. “The next, he sits on a stage, almost completely ignored, and must listen to his successor criticize his work.
“I almost felt sorry for him,” he added. “But not very.
“When he climbed into the helicopter and flew away I said, ‘Bye-bye. Please don’t come back.’ ”
For the past 23 years, I’ve accompanied a group of high school seniors overseas to a Model United Nations conference in The Hague,  Netherlands. Schools from more than 130 countries attend the conference, creating a truly international environment. When you throw teachers of history, international affairs and geography together, you get discussion. Particularly about American politics, a subject (I’m not kidding, sadly enough) most Europeans can speak about with greater depth than many Americans.
Five presidents have occupied the Oval Office during my tenure. Each has been the subject of intense scrutiny.
Of those five, none has generated the euphoria, hope and optimism Barack Obama has inspired around the world.
All things being relative, it’s important to note than none generated the disdain and head-scratching “how-did-that-guy-ever-get-elected?” wonder of Obama’s predecessor.
When I returned this year I consulted the journals I’ve kept on every trip. (What can I say, there’s a lot of time to kill when you can’t sleep well in a foreign land, away from home and family.) Here’s a brief summary of my notes about European dissections of American presidents:
Reagan — Begrudging respect. Tended to shoot from the hip a bit too much, but can’t argue with the guy’s leadership/cheerleading skills. Can’t deny his involvement in hastening the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Bush I — Nice guy, relatively harmless. Made a big mistake not finishing the job in Iraq.
Clinton — Good for the U.S., not so much for other parts of the world. Balkan policy a disaster. Ditto Africa. Got some sympathy votes from Europeans who couldn’t understand why such a big deal was made of the Lewinsky scandal. Here’s an interesting quote I wrote down. “Do Americans honestly believe Bill Clinton is the first politician — or first president for that matter — who had sex with a staff member and then lied about it? Are you all that gullible? And why do you care?”
Bush II — A disaster from the beginning. Most Europeans recognize Afghanistan and that general region as the hotbed of terrorist support. Felt Bush sacrificed efforts there to clean up his dad’s mess in Iraq. His administration’s general attitude of cluelessness/turn-and-look-the-other-way toward cracks in the American economy is now bearing rotten fruit.
Truly, this is only the tip of the critical iceberg.
Bush II also lost on style points. As the waiter said, “English is my third language, but I believe I speak it more clearly than your own president does, don’t you agree?” No argument from me on that one. At least while serving dinner the guy didn’t put any food on my family.
But the praise for Obama was universally effusive for both his style and substance. I found myself entering restaurants and conversations with hope, not with the usual head-down, “Oh jeesh, here come some more shots at our foreign policy again” feeling I’d had in years past.
The people I met truly feel a new day has dawned.
But not without a cloudy lining.
For shortly after they expressed their unbridled joy, everyone followed with essentially the same question. As a teacher from Germany wondered, “It has taken a long time for the world to get to where it is now and will take an equally long time to solve our many problems. Do you think the American Congress and the American people understand that Obama offers the best chance to help us all survive? Will you extend to him the trust and patience he requires?”
When it comes to partisan politics in America, I’m fairly cynical. And by “cynical” I mean “largely disgusted by it. “
Yet, I must admit to sharing their optimism about an Obama presidency. At the very least, he offers a breath of fresh air to the political scene while reinforcing that romantic American land-of-infinite-opportunity notion of “anyone can grow up to be president.”
And I want him to succeed in his goal to lead this nation through unity, not by division.
I didn’t want to rain on their (and my) parade with a snide comment regarding American patience. But I can’t shake a nagging suspicion that eventually things will revert to a political “business as usual.”
So I answered as honestly and as optimistically as I could, and meant every word.
“I sure hope so.”