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2012: A U.S. Referendum on Europe The EU’s crisis is not just fiscal and monetary. It’s also a crisis of vision and character.
“Do the Iowans who will turn out to vote today know all this? I suspect they do. What is happening in Europe is more than an economic crisis: It’s the coming apart of a world view that held together for over a century. For Europeans it will probably mean a decade of economic hardship and political risk. For Americans, it’s a loud pinging signal coming across the Distant Early Warning Line.”
The conventional wisdom about this year’s presidential election is that it’s mostly about domestic issues and barely about foreign policy. That’s wrong. What kicks off today in Iowa is America’s referendum on whether it wants to become an honorary member of the European Union.
GOP-leaning voters generally get this: Warning against the “European social democrat” model is one of Mitt Romney’s better talking points. The problem for Mr. Romney is that he represents something of another European specialty: the dispassionate technocrat, data-driven, post-ideological, lacking in soul. GOP-leaning voters get that, too.
Many on the left also understand American politics as a referendum on Europe, and it wasn’t all that long ago that they were more-or-less prepared to say it. For example:
• “Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.”
-Paul Krugman, Jan. 10, 2010
• “The European Dream, with its emphasis on collective responsibility and global consciousness. . . . represents humanity’s best aspirations for a better tomorrow.”
-Jeremy Rifkin, “The European Dream,” 2004
• “If we took Europe as a guide, we would do a lot better at capitalism.”
-Thomas Geoghegan, “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?” 2010
These views have now become a bit embarrassing, intellectually speaking. But it hasn’t done much to change the basic terms of the debate President Obama will have with whoever emerges as his challenger.