In Europe, passionate cheering for Kerry

[Keirsey]

LONDON Most European historians and political pundits agree that it has been a long time, at least a generation, since the world has felt so consumed with passion about an American election, and since so many have been so hopeful of regime change in Washington. This year, they say, there is one place where the choice between John Kerry and George W. Bush will indeed have a profound impact, and interestingly it is not the Middle East. It is Europe. Timothy Garton Ash, director of the European Studies Center at Oxford, argues that the ‘‘wrenching confrontation’’ between Europe and America over the war in Iraq has plunged the world into crisis and made this ‘‘a formative election for the world.’’ If Bush is re-elected, Garton Ash said, his perceived unilateral approach to the international community and willingness to flout international law will cause Europe ‘‘to define ourselves against America.’’

He added: ‘‘You will become ‘the other,’ for Europeans.’’

But if the winner is Kerry, who is perceived as having a multilateral and internationalist approach to diplomacy, he said, the European Union is more likely to develop ‘‘in concert’’ with the United States, to look to it as a partner in the economy and security and to focus on what the two sides of the Atlantic have in common.

A West European diplomat in Washington said: ‘‘There will be a sense of relief in Europe if Kerry is elected. He has a very different style than Bush, and a very different instinct as an internationalist. And in diplomacy, style is substance.’’

http://www.iht.com/articles/531202.html

[jdj]

1. Good to know.

And it's probably not really Kerry they are cheering about.

I think the whole world is ABB by now.