When John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan went to Berlin, their rhetoric soared, but their optimism was grounded in the reality of politics, conflict and hard choices. Kennedy didn’t dream of the universal brotherhood of man. He drew lines that reflected hard realities: “There are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin.” Reagan didn’t call for a kumbaya moment. He cited tough policies that sparked harsh political disagreements — the deployment of U.S. missiles in response to the Soviet SS-20s — but still worked.
[Obama] has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality....Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney.
I agree with Brooks that, compared to the Berlin speeches made by Kennedy and Reagan, Obama's was light on substance--some pretty airy-fairy stuff. But I also think it makes a critical difference that Obama, unlike Kennedy and Reagan at the time, is not the acting head of state. If Obama had gone in with all sorts of substantive policy proposals, it would have been too explicitly presidential and he would have been rightly skewered for pretending to powers he doesn't have.
So I think Obama was wise to keep this a largely superficial event--an event that shows to people back home that, hey, it doesn't have to be the case that Europeans loathe America.
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