Why America doesn't understand Europe

This morning I read the Vinocur column in today's International Herald Tribune and frankly couldn't believe what I was reading. Some excerpts:

Why would an American president not come to a celebration marking the fall of the Berlin Wall, and with it, the triumphant end of the Cold War — one of the high points of the United States’ and Europe’s common 20th-century history?

Whatever the exact answer — and it could be that a fatigued Barack Obama didn’t want the physical strain of a trans-Atlantic trip days before a weeklong tour of Asia — his absence from the Nov. 9 ceremonies in Germany has reinforced Europe’s fear that it has become an increasingly insignificant part of the president’s worldview.

That's for starters.

The author goes on analyzing the lack of a warm Atlantic friendship which, he thinks, is largely due to the fact that the foreign policies of Obama are , well, a bit disappointing.

Fair enough. But then:

When Europe picks its first council president and high representative (foreign minister) on Thursday, it will probably pass over internationally meaningful names like Tony Blair, Joschka Fischer or Carl Bildt, in favor of blander, less markedly willful men and women.

This discussion is getting ridiculous. Why would we give the presidency to someone who comes from an anti-European, we-don't-want-the-Euro, leave-us-ruling-the-waves country like the UK and, to top it off, to a Blair who has become a caricature? Internationally meaningfull? Yes, when it comes to charging huge fees.

So Vinocur ends with

If Mr. Obama, quite understandably, were to see them as blanks — quick now, who led Europe at the Nov. 3 E.U.-United States summit meeting in Washington? (Answer: Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt of Sweden) — then Europe’s concerns about its deepening irrelevance for America seem realistic.

Djeezes!