Election Sentiment in Europe

For a view on the US elections in Europe we spoke to Amy Bracken in Paris and Gerry Hadden in Barcelona.

Amy says the election is being followed very closely in France, but it’s not quite as “electric” as it was four years ago.

From Spain, Gerry says the overall interest is “more muted than it was four years ago.”

Some of that has do to with the economic crisis in Europe, but there’s also disappointment in Obama for not keeping promises made during the last election.

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Aaron Schacter: For several days Marco Werman has been bringing us global views on the election from London. Let’s head now to other parts of Europe to a couple of our own correspondents. First we have Amy Bracken in Paris. Amy, the U.S. elections, are they a big deal where you are?

Amy Bracken: You know, you’d almost think that people here were actually voting. It’s just amazing how much coverage there’s been. And I’ve been learning a lot from the coverage, just reading the newspapers, learning about how the whole electoral process works, learning about the details of the candidates families, and where they stand on the issues. People are following this very closely. I wasn’t here four years ago, I understand it was really electric four years ago, people say it’s not quite that. Now there might be a little bit more fear of things changing for the worse, but people are pretty into this. They’re pretty excited.

Schacter: Well thank goodness for the French media. You learn a little bit there. Amy, you were out and about today in Paris. What were people telling you?

Bracken: Some people talked about more specific policies, some people talked about health care. I talked to one person who had just emerged from the hospital. He’s a furniture maker, he injured himself on the job, his name is Frederique Sanchez, and I spoke with him in a cafe this morning in Paris.

Frederique Sanchez: He’s trying to put healthcare for all Americans, and this is a big thing. A man who’ll do things like that can’t be a bad man.

Schacter: Amy, hold on for just a moment. We’re going to turn now to Gerry Hadden in Barcelona. Gerry, the sentiment there? Similar? Hope, excitement, a little bit of fear, perhaps?

Gerry Hadden: Well, I think compared to what Amy’s been telling us, the over-all interest in the U.S. election here is decidedly more muted than it was four years ago. A lot of that has to do with the economic crisis going on here. It also has to do with some disappoint in Obama himself. As Amy mentioned, Europeans were very excited when he was elected four years ago, in part because of some of the promises he made, especially closing down Guantanamo Bay, and so forth. They also thought that he was going to pay more attention to Europe than he has over the past four years. The flip side is Mitt Romney, and I have to say, my sense is that he hasn’t made much of a deep impression in Europe. The other day I asked a parent down at my kid’s school who she’d like to see as the next American President, and here’s part of what she said.

Woman: [Speaking Spanish]

Hadden: Basically, she wants to say that she doesn’t know much about Mitt Romney, but she can even remember his name. I think it’s fair to say that across Europe Romney has left somewhat of a shallow footprint, and when he has mentioned Europe in the campaign, it’s only been to hold it up as an example of failure. The failure of the so called ‘Welfare State,’ which to his mind means a state that over spends and over coddles it’s citizens with social services, such as universal healthcare, and many people find that insulting. Related to that, he’s also a proponent of austerity, of slashing government spending, and if you look at Spain and Greece, the two poster children for austerity in Europe, their economies are imploding, and both have unemployment rates hovering around 25%. So when Romney mentions slashing government spending, what more and more Europeans in the south of the continent are hearing is, ‘economic suicide.’

Schacter: And he also used both Spain and Greece in debates as examples of what the United States does not want to become.

Hadden: That’s right.

Schacter: Now, this is a question for both you Gerry, in Spain, and you, Amy, in France. What really struck you about this election from your vantage point there and the sentiment in Europe?

Bracken: One thing, I was struck by how uncritical people were. I expected a lot more criticism of Obama. I think that people-, you know, a number of people said, ‘Hey, you know, I see this differently from how I would as an American, I don’t really know all the details of his policies. But what I see on the other end is this guy – and it’s funny, Gerry a lot of people here couldn’t think of his name, either – this other guy who, he seems to be unpredictable, he’s very far to the right. I was just stuck by, sort of, how clear the divisions were in people’s minds.

Hadden: What surprised me, really, this time around, is this sort of-. you know, I have to say, a low level of interest in the details of the election. I have interviewed people all over Spain, even as far as Germany before this election. When you ask people, ‘Who would you like to see as the next President,’ invariably people were saying to me, ‘Obama,’ but when asked, ‘Why?’ or what issues were important, people would just kind of shrug, especially in Spain, and say, ‘Well, you know, it’s the most powerful country in the world,’ but no one really had pressing issues vis-a-vis the United States that they wanted to talk about. I really think it has to do with the fact that people are simply just struggling so much with their own economic situations, trying to find jobs, or hang on to jobs, or just make ends meet. That has somehow put the U.S. election at a greater distance than we’ve seen in the past.

Schacter: The World’s Gerry Hadden from Barcelona, and Amy Hadden joined us from Paris. Thank you guys.

Bracken: Thank you.

Hadden: Thanks a lot.

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