Barack Obama is the most European president of the United States that there has ever been. Barack Obama is the least European president of the United States that there has ever been.
Let me explain. In his commitment to social justice and universal healthcare, and in the positive role he sees for government, Obama is closer to the political values of contemporary Europe than any of his predecessors. Strip away the obligatory rhetoric about American exceptionalism, and what he says on most domestic issues would fit comfortably into the programme of any mainstream European party. In the substance of his domestic policies, he is almost a European.
In the way he thinks about the world, however, and even more in his view of Europe itself, he could not be more different. His mental map goes north-south, not east-west. His roots are in Kenya and the American midwest; his childhood experience was in Indonesia and Hawaii. He writes in his memoirs of how, during a European stopover on the way to Kenya, he did not find a personal, emotional connection to Europe. Biographically, he is the personification of a trend that analysts have identified in the abstract: a demographic shift, since the mid-1960s, towards Americans of non-European origin, weakening cultural and historical transatlantic ties.
He is also the first modern president young enough not to have been decisively shaped by the cold war, which made Americans willy-nilly interested in the old continent, since it was the central theatre of superpower competition. Today's frontline theatres are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran. America's key strategic partner and competitor is China. And Obama's deep personal issue in world affairs is development: that is, the richer north helping the poorer south to help itself.
But hang on, you may exclaim, less European than George Bush? Surely not. Well, oddly enough, yes.
Culturally a child of the east coast as much as of Texas, and old enough to be shaped by the cold war, Bush had a strong residual image of the transatlantic west. Even the anti-Europeanism of the neoconservatives was a kind of backhanded tribute. While they chuntered on about Europe becoming Islamised, irrelevant, senile and impotent, the fact that they obsessed about it showed they still thought it mattered.
This time it is different. To be sure, the major European powers remain, after China, the most operationally significant to American foreign policy. And, unlike China, they remain the most likely to be more or less on the same side as the US, sharing interests as well as values, and confronting common challenges in other parts of the world. As one senior official put it to me: we spend quite a lot of time talking to people in Europe about what we should do in Asia; we don't spend much time talking to people in Asia about what we should do in Europe.
Yet the approach of the Obama administration to "the Europeans" is quite pragmatic, unsentimental and realistic. It might be summarised as: what can you do for us today? On Afghanistan. On Pakistan. On Iran.
Yes, this president can do the soaring European speeches "“ in Prague, on a nuclear-free world; and in Normandy, on the 65th anniversary of D-Day. But talking to senior officials, I have little sense of any vision of a strategic partnership between the world's two greatest unions of the rich and free, the US and the EU. David Miliband may conjure the ideal of a "G3" (US, EU, China) as opposed to a G2 (just US and China), but most people here wouldn't know what you were talking about.
Pragmatically, they take Europe as they find it. Where it acts as a single unit "“ on trade and competition policy "“ they deal with it as a single unit. Where it doesn't "“ on the deployment of soldiers to Afghanistan, for example, or even on tighter sanctions against Iran "“ they deal with 27 individual governments. That's tiresome, but it's just the way it is.
This attitude to Europe combines, in equal parts, respect and contempt. Respect inasmuch as they treat Europe as a bunch of grown-up, sovereign countries, no longer needing or wanting American tutelage. Contempt insofar as they recognise how far reality lags behind the rhetoric of European unity.
Officials in Washington know better than anyone how European leaders compete for an audience with the president or secretary of state; how they go behind each other's backs to win that contract, offer this special service, and generally preen themselves to be favourite poodle. Whether it's Nicolas Sarkozy insisting on being on stage with Obama to make his own agitated remarks about the discovery of Iran's hidden nuclear facility; or an importunate David Cameron, desperate to get his photo-op with Obama before the British election; or the Moldovan foreign minister needing his five minutes with Hillary "“ the silly game is the same. As for these promises of Europe finally getting its act together in foreign policy, if the Polish and Czech presidents now sign the Lisbon treaty, even the oldest friends of Europe in Washington sigh: we'll believe it when we see it.
I asked a friend in the administration whether anyone on his particular corridor of power had yet mentioned the resounding Irish yes to the Lisbon treaty. He smiled. Nope, they hadn't. And why should they? A flicker of interest was aroused this week by reports that Tony Blair might become the so-called president of the EU. (Here, he's still much admired.) This suggests to me two things: first, the personalities chosen as president "“ that is, chair "“ of the European council and as high representative for foreign and security policy will matter a lot; second, nobody understands that, for Europe's future role in the world, the latter is actually the more important job.
In any case, Europe will not begin to have an effective foreign policy unless the major European states want it to. At the moment Germany is less committed to sublimating itself in a European identity than it used to be in the days of Helmut Kohl. And the likely next prime minister of Britain "“ who delivers his keynote speech at the Conservative party conference today "“ is dead against a common European foreign policy.
On balance, the Obama administration would prefer to work with a more united Europe "“ especially now that the leaders of Britain, Germany and, most surprisingly, France are solidly Atlanticist. Apart from anything else, life would just be that much simpler. The president could usefully say a firm word to that effect in Cameron's ear, if the Conservative leader gets his 15 minutes in the sun. But, unlike during the cold war, the United States is not focused on Europe and does not regard helping to build a strong, united Europe as being among its own vital interests. Europeans may continue to feel that Obama is "one of us"; and in one way he is, but in another way he isn't "“ and he certainly won't do our work for us. If we Europeans want to get our act together, we must get our act together. If we don't, the United States will continue to deal with us as we are, not as we pretend to be.
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