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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Benny B on April 01, 2009, 08:39:50 AM
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April 2, 2009
Eyes of the World Are on Obama
By JEFF ZELENY
The rapid political rise of Barack Obama can be gauged in many ways, but one of the best measures can perhaps be found in London, on the front stoop of No. 10 Downing Street.
Mr. Obama walked through the famous doorway for the first time less than four years ago. A dozen reporters were on hand that afternoon in August 2005, at least half of whom were waiting for someone else. After speaking for a moment, Mr. Obama climbed into a white van, along with the rest of a Congressional delegation, and was soon walking through the streets of London alone, on his way to meet his older sister for dinner.
When Mr. Obama came back last summer for a Downing Street appearance on the final leg of an overseas campaign trip, the pack of journalists had swelled by a few hundred. The tabloid reporters, along with adoring crowds, screamed his name.
That scene was magnified yet again on Wednesday. This time, after meeting for two hours inside No. 10 with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Mr. Obama held forth at a press conference that was televised live on both sides of the Atlantic.
“I came here to listen, not to lecture,” Mr. Obama said, standing before a row of American and British flags. Before leaving, he added: “There’s one last thing I should mention I love about Great Britain and that is the Queen. I’m very much looking forward to meeting her.”
On Mr. Obama’s first journey abroad as an American president, the eyes of the world are upon him as never before.
Gone are the days when he can walk unnoticed into a pub, as he did one night four years ago, and sip a pint with a handful of Americans who were traveling with him. And he surely can no longer express childlike delight, as he did during his first visit to No. 10 Downing Street, when he declared: “They let me sit in Winston Churchill’s reading chair!”
While the stakes are remarkably high for the Group of 20 summit meeting, where he will meet his new contemporaries from around the globe, this is essentially the trip Mr. Obama has been waiting for since the moment he began his presidential campaign. One of reasons he made the improbable decision to run, he told voters again and again over the last two years, was to try and renew America’s image around the world.
Mr. Obama, the first United States president who spent a substantial part of his childhood abroad, has long had a feeling of wanderlust. From the moment he arrived in the Senate in 2005, his aides began sketching out a foreign travel schedule for his first term, all of which was considered official business because he was a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
The first year: Russia, Ukraine and a quick stop in London. He played the role of political understudy to Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, for his annual inspection of nuclear weapons sites in the former Soviet Union. (It was on this trip that Mr. Obama learned a lesson in the art of patient diplomacy, when the senators were detained for several hours in the city of Perm, about 500 miles outside Moscow. Mr. Lugar let his staff do the arguing as he settled into an easy chair to wait. Mr. Obama quickly followed suit, taking a nap on a couch nearby.)
The second year: Africa. Mr. Obama traveled solo to the continent of his father, where he was greeted by throngs of adoring Kenyans. (This time, he faced a different question of diplomacy: What to do with a goat that was offered up as a gift to the visiting American?)
He did not schedule a foreign trip during his third summer in the Senate, so he could spend time in Iowa and other early-voting states. And last year, a high-profile trip to the Middle East and Europe essentially served as a test drive for this week — except that now the plentiful challenges facing the United States and the world are his burden to bear.
“The world is hungry for American leadership,” Mr. Obama said in an interview last summer aboard his campaign plane as it flew from Paris to London. “There remains great respect and fondness for America and the American idea. And if we can tap into that, it will help us with our agenda.”
When Mr. Obama spoke those words, he did not know whether he would ultimately become president. His trip stirred controversy, with Senator John McCain mocking him in a round of television commercials as a celebrity to the world, showing images of Mr. Obama delivering a speech to thousands of Germans who were waving American flags.
Now, that is precisely what will be tested: whether Mr. Obama’s celebrity can help overcome resentment of the United States for its role in the global economic crisis.
When he arrived at Downing Street on Wednesday morning, his presidential limousine and a full motorcade waited outside.