Here’s how the German magazine Der Spiegel puts it:
Europe was ecstatic when Barack Obama got elected, but the enthusiasm has dampened since he took office in January. On the eve of his first visit to Europe as president, some here are wondering how seriously he takes the Continent.
The Der Spiegel article continued:
When Obama arrives in London on Tuesday for the start of his one-week visit to Europe, he’ll come as a friend, but as one who is still in some ways a stranger. Europe backed his election campaign more enthusiastically than most other parts of the world. But the White House has been too preoccupied coping with domestic crises to devote much attention to this region in the first two months of Obama’s presidency.
And later:
Still, the Obama skeptics in Europe are having a field day. “The notion that Europe is going to rally around this administration is being exploded,” Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Post. Indeed, a feeling of skepticism regarding Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy and his proposals for solving the financial crisis has been making itself felt.
Hillary Clinton read the Der Spiegel article and said, “No problem, Barack. Just take ‘em another one of those reset buttons. They really love those things over there.”
Source: DerSpiegel.com via RealClearPolitics.com
