How they see us: Obama takes on Merkel

Call it the “summit of the clueless,” said Eric Bonse in Die Tageszeitung (Germany). The leaders of the Group of Eight—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S.—got together last week at Camp David to discuss the precarious state of the global economy. Barack Obama may have been a fine host, but he wasn’t much of a facilitator. All the leaders could agree on was that they’re in favor of growth—but whether that growth comes from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s austerity approach or from American-style government stimulus packages was not specified. Which proves that “they don’t have the slightest idea how to go about solving the euro crisis.” The summit produced only a general “sense of bewilderment.”

Obama tried his best, said Jurek Kuczkiewicz in Le Soir (Belgium). A lot was at stake for him. If the European economy falls back into a major recession, it will drag the U.S. down too—along with Obama’s chances of re-election. So he found a new best friend at the summit: France’s freshly elected Socialist president, François Hollande. It “wasn’t personal”—the two men didn’t particularly hit it off. But Obama wholeheartedly agreed with Hollande’s growth agenda, and the two of them pressed Merkel to drop her firm opposition to deficit spending. For those who wondered whether the old pro-austerity “Merkozy” tandem would be replaced by “Merkollande,” wonder no more. “Instead what is emerging is Obamollande.”

That’s one point against Merkel, said Robin Alexander in Die Welt (Germany). But she evened the score at the summit by firmly refusing to agree to any new stimulus package, “a tactic she sees as wasteful nonsense.” Just like the soccer game between Bayern Munich and Chelsea that Merkel slipped out of the Camp David deliberations to watch, the end result was “an honorable draw.” Thank goodness she stood her ground, said Christoph Rybarczyk in the Hamburger Abendblatt (Germany). Obama just doesn’t get Europe. He believes we can spend our way to growth, because that’s what the U.S. did to get out of the Great Depression. But Europe is a completely different animal. Thanks to EU transfers and subsidies, we already have far too many pointless spending programs, leading to endless “Portuguese roads that lead nowhere.” Merkel is right not to allow more.

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At least Obama still has a friend in British Prime Minister David Cameron, said The Times (U.K.) in an editorial. The two, who got to spend some quality time together running on treadmills in the Camp David gym, have “the one good personal relationship” among all the G-8 leaders. Let’s hope both men can broaden their friendship circle. Because “there has never been a greater need for the leaders in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow to get along well—and those relationships have rarely been so unformed.”