Foreign leaders’ public friendships with top U.S. officials are back in fashion.
For years during the Bush administration, politicians in various countries - including U.S. allies - scored points during election campaigns by distancing themselves from or even taking swipes at the president and his chief lieutenants.
Opposing the Iraq war and the “unilateral” Bush foreign policy were popular among voters from Europe to Asia to Latin America. In perhaps the most public spat, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice accused then German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of “poisoning” relations between Washington and Berlin during his 2002 successful re-election bid.
Germans are heading to the polls again this year, but the U.S. factor looks very different.
Barack Obama went to Germany during his campaign to show his international appeal and now a German candidate is trying a similar tactic.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is running against his boss, Chancellor Angela Merkel, visited Washington Tuesday and did his best to appear as one of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s closest friends.
Beyond the usual diplomatic niceties, Mr. Steinmeier repeated Mrs. Clinton’s first name at least five times during their brief remarks to reporters after lunching together at the State Department. But what caught the attention of U.S. officials were more obvious signs that Mr. Steinmeier is running for office.
“I was shocked he spoke German” during his public remarks, after speaking fluent English at lunch, said a senior U.S. official, who asked not to be named because he was discussing a private meeting. “This was clearly meant for a domestic audience.”
A German official said that it is not unusual for Mr. Steinmeier to speak German in public.
The minister flew to Washington on his government plane and brought along about 20 reporters. In contrast, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who met with Mrs. Clinton earlier in the day, flies commercially, British officials said. Mr. Miliband had to charter a plane for his flight from London because of the severe weather there, but he was planning to go back on a commercial flight.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Miliband made their remarks to the press in the State Department’s relatively modest Treaty Room. Mr. Steinmeier was treated to the ornate and much larger Benjamin Franklin Room. A U.S. official attributed that decision to the room’s proximity to the lunch venue.
Mr. Steinmeier, who heads Germany’s Social Democratic Party, wrote a long congratulatory letter to President Obama after his election last year, praising his “courage” and describing his victory speech as “music to our ears.”
“You rekindled the American dream for which countless people the world over have admired your country for more than 200 years, the dream of a society that has the power to change, that is open to new ideas and that gives those with courage room to take their destiny into their own hands,” he wrote.
His party is in a coalition government with Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Constanze Stelzenmueller, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, said Mr. Steinmeier is serious about foreign policy and his enthusiasm about the new U.S. administration is genuine.
“He is not just campaigning,” she said. “But I find it endearing how my country has started to fall in love with America all over again.”
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