”I have a theory.”

The Atlantic Review calls our attention to a piece by Jeff Gedmin, who, surrounded, finds himself wondering about the happiness Europeans have at the results of the US midterm elections. He tells is through his experiences, or rather episodes of witnessing the random and irreverent indignation that we’re all used to.

Several years ago, I helped convene a conference in Prague in parallel to a NATO summit going on at the same time. On the last evening of the summit, Czech president Václav Havel kindly invited our conference participants to attend a state dinner at Prague Castle. Chirac, Blair, Schröder, all the leaders from NATO countries were there. So was President Bush. One of our participants was a Gore adviser, who went up to the president at dinner and introduced himself. The president recognized this fellow, greeted him warmly and, turning on a dime, said to the French president standing nearby, "Hey, Jacques, I want to introduce you to a friend of mine." The president then took a short walk with this Democratic adviser, asking along the way about advice for new exercise equipment for the White House. In the end, my Democratic colleague was charmed by the warmth and down-to-earth quality of his encounter with the commander in chief.

If I tell a group of Americans this story, they tend to be impressed. Love him or hate him, the story suggests that Bush is a real mensch. If I tell this story to Europeans, and I've done so several times, they either look disgusted (as in--"how unsophisticated, how unstatesmanlike!") or their faces go blank because they don't quite understand the anecdote. And so my simple theory: Bush's greatest sin in the eyes of Europeans is that he is too American.

I can confirm that there is a widespread arrogance, completely unaware of itself that thinks it reasonable to expect an American to do his best to not be American. It goes unquestioned, and would never be expected of Mugabe or a Belrusian in love with his own despotism.

The usual overraught Euro-anger gives way to the perfunctory pointless end-zone dance, a shot in the foot, and adulation at the diminishment of people acting in their general interest.

I recall a friendly dinner party in Bonn while Ronald Reagan was president. As usual, I was on the defensive. The other guests were piling on--"Reagan is a cowboy, a warmonger, an idiot-actor"--when suddenly a German guest decided he had heard enough. "Hey, let's not get carried away," he said "and condemn all Americans just because of this cretin in the White House." I'd like to say these over-the-top opinions reflected only the company I was keeping, but these sentiments were pretty mainstream at the time. So I had to laugh when the German media later eulogized Reagan as the man who helped bring down the Berlin Wall.

The ire shows often to be about the idealism.

George W. Bush is the full package of everything that makes Europe squirm. He is undiluted Americanism. He is anti-elitism. He's religion and piety. He's morality and muscle. He's patriotism and self-confidence. He is rather like that dreaded American animal, the "neoconservative."
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An Austrian editor once explained to me that transatlantic tensions often resulted from the fact that the United States has double standards, "while we," he added, "have none."

It’s always about the idealism. I don’t think Gedmin goes far enough. I remember the same conversations taking place about another US president – a man with a boy’s name. Jimmy Carter.

The very lack of idealism is repeatedly projected by them on the rest of the world. Just to let you know, from virtually everywhere it looks a lot more like a widespread personal problem, and not a theory of any kind. It’s more worthy of counseling than self-administered amphetamines.