Leading article: Adulation needs to be tempered with realism

The Democratic candidate for US President embarks today on the second half of a foreign tour designed with two objectives in mind: to convince US voters that he is no innocent abroad and to show his foreign hosts how much more amenable an ally he would be than either George Bush or John McCain. Between now and Saturday, Barack Obama will find out whether the same magic that won him his party's nomination can work for him in Berlin, Paris and London as well.

In a well-judged speech before he left the US, Mr Obama pressed all the right buttons for this second, European, section of his journey. He extolled George Marshall and the plan that helped rebuild Europe after the Second World War. He spoke of the need to listen and show respect; he praised the European preference for patient negotiation over force, and he pledged himself to cooperative efforts to combat climate change and to reform – not disband – the United Nations. The contrast with George Bush, especially the first-term George Bush, could hardly have been greater.

It is no exaggeration to say that relations with Europe have been among the most egregious, and most avoidable, failures of Mr Bush's presidency. It was not just his hubris over Iraq – although that war served to reinforce European hostility. It was his early US-centrism, his woeful inexperience of abroad, and his apparent lack of interest in how other people perceived the world. The gung-ho language and manners, as he has recently come close to acknowledging, only made matters worse.

Both Mr Obama and Mr McCain have, rightly, identified relations with Europe as a priority area for repair – at the level of popular opinion as well as national leaders. And both are right to judge, that with centre-right governments in power in Germany and France, and the Conservatives in the ascendant here, the climate for mending fences is improving on this side of the Atlantic as well. But it is Mr Obama who has captured the popular imagination, with his relative youth, his rhetorical gifts and his air of modernity. Public opinion polls show that if Europeans had a vote, Barack Obama would be elected President of the United States tomorrow.

As John Kerry's ill-fated presidential candidacy demonstrated four years ago, however, a sensitivity towards Europe and an enthusiastic reception in its capitals can easily combine to become an electoral liability in the United States, even at a time when Americans themselves – as they clearly do – have an appetite for change. We also note that Mr Obama's team was a little less sure-footed than might have been expected in planning the central element of his Europe trip.

To expect to deliver a speech against the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate was always an ambition too far. We do not know whether Mr Obama really hoped to emulate JFK's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech of 45 years ago, or whether his team simply judged this to be the most recognisable landmark for US television audiences. But Chancellor Angela Merkel was right to worry that such a site might be interpreted as official endorsement of his candidacy. All foreign governments have a duty to observe neutrality; the decision in November is for American voters.

This does not mean that the "Obamania" that may well break out in Berlin this evening is a bad thing, or that Europeans have no interest in who becomes the next President of the United States. It is rather that adulation needs to be tempered with realism. If, as he promises, a theme of Mr Obama's speech in Berlin will be a commitment to listen to Europe, we should pay him the same compliment, and listen just as carefully to him.

For rolling comment on the US election visit: independent.co.uk/campaign08

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