Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism.
The Dartmouth
June 20, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Continental Divide

I am always interested in the reception I get as an American abroad. Living in Europe for the Fall and Winter, I learned a thumbs-up for President Barack Obama and thumbs-down for George W. Bush meant a warm greeting and friendly conversation. The other way around, and I would almost always receive a sharp scowl and long rant about die Republikaner, les rpublicains, or, if they were nice enough to speak English, Republicans. Through these interactions, I learned a lot about European attitudes towards the United States.

While Republicans are poised to make 2010 a year of electoral victories in the United States, Europeans continue to associate them with former President Bush a man of much international despise. During the 2008 campaign, the Democrats capitalized on the same feeling at home to gain not only the presidency, but also comfortable majorities in both the House and the Senate. That, however, was 2008. In the past year, public opinion has shifted significantly at least in the United States. In the Senate special election in Massachusetts earlier this year, Democratic candidate Martha Coakley attempted to use this tactic, pointing out similarities between now-Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Bush. This time, however, voters didn't make the association or they didn't care.

Following Brown's victory in January, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., likened Brown's victory to the "shot heard round the world," referring to the opening shot of the Revolutionary War, which sparked revolutionary acts worldwide in the fight against tyranny. Brown's victory has certainly stirred some opposition in the United States against Obama and, if the metaphor serves me right, his "tyrannical" policies most importantly, Obamacare.

This, however, is not the case in Europe, where Obama's honeymoon period remains strong with no sign of waning. In almost every European country Obama enjoys record approval ratings: 88 percent in France, 92 percent in Germany and 82 percent in the U. K. Most Europeans justifiably know nothing of Brown or the evermore-curious Tea Party movement. The few who did "hear the shot," like my host mother, merely cringed at the thought of Republicans. Detached from American domestic politics, Europeans remain stuck in November 2008, wrapped in a bulletproof shroud of Obamamania.

Americans are equally, if not more, detached from European politics. Britain just had an election that was the most consequential election in several decades. Talking with people on campus, students knew there was an election, but not who was running or its historic significance. And in a similar situation to the Massachusetts special election, the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is having an election this Sunday that threatens to deny German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat and Liberal coalition government its majority in the Bundesrat, Germany's upper house of parliament. This would allow the parties on the left in Germany to block many of the governing coalition's proposals a huge potential setback for Merkel. Sound familiar? Again, another event that I'm sure most Americans will take little heed of. Why should we?

This detachment is understandable given our geographic isolation, but it also stems from our different perspectives. Working for the German parliament this Winter, I gained some insight into that perspective. My boss, for example, aptly pointed out that Germans don't understand the American health care debate because Germany solved health care a long time ago. In fact, Germany has the world's oldest universal health care system, dating back to Otto von Bismarck's Health Insurance Act of 1883. For Germans, universal health care has always been around. This is not just the case for health care, nor is it much different in other European countries.

As much as we sometimes like to think we are similar, Europeans and Americans have very different perspectives on the world so much so that there exists a huge fundamental divide between the two continents. Obama's election marked a significant narrowing of this divide following eight grueling years of the Bush presidency. Nonetheless, Europeans and Americans still show little understanding or interest in the current events of the other. If this isn't the case, then we should all be hearing a "shot" sometime on Sunday and experience a wave of social-democratic upheaval when Merkel's coalition is defeated, at least according to John McCain.