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How “European” is Obama? June 10, 2009 / John K. Glenn

"Black man given nation's worst job," joked the satirical American newspaper, The Onion, in light of the crises President Obama faced when he took office. Yet Obama continues to be remarkably popular, with approval ratings above 60 percent and a dramatic increase in the percentage of Americans who feel that the country is heading in the right direction since his election.

The question in many minds is, what will his policies look like in these circumstances?

Interestingly, voices can be heard both in Europe and the United States that declare Obama's policies are "European." Yet, looking closely, it's clear that this means very different things depending on who's talking, and we risk misunderstanding each other at the moment when the new U.S. administration seeks to mend the recent rift in transatlantic relations.

In Europe, Obama has been greeted with overwhelming approval since his election, when the Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs declared, "he speaks like us." Claiming signs of "convergence" with Obama's policies has been a way for Europeans to say that they were right in their criticisms of the Bush administration in recent years.

Just before the G20 summit in April, European Union President Jose Manuel Barroso declared, "the Americans are coming much closer now to our position." Others have noted with satisfaction Obama's decision to close the detention facility in Guantanamo, ban torture, and move toward a new treaty on climate change.

Voices in the United States also describe Obama's policies as European, but this is often meant as a warning about the dangers of big government. Michael Boskin suggested in the Wall Street Journal that Obama's budget was a "step toward a European style social welfare state" and warned this would lead to "long-run economic stagnation" and lower standards of living.

Roger Cohen worried about increased state intervention in Obama's budget, saying "one France is enough." Charles Murray said ominously, "thank God America isn't like Europe - yet." His worry was not just the prospect of increased state intervention, but that the European model, he said, "drains too much of the life from life."

This may surprise Europeans who pride themselves on their quality of life compared with the hustle of American daily life. Conservatives like Murray look at Europe and see a continent where marriage rates are declining and fertility rates falling below population replacement levels because Europeans do not value the family.

The percentages of Europeans who say they love their jobs are lower than in the United States, he felt, because leisure is the measure of quality of life in Europe and work is seen as a necessary evil. Churches are empty, if well-maintained by the government for tourists, because Europeans have embraced secularism. Murray concluded that European social policies weaken the institutions of family, work, and faith, and he warned that the policies of the Democratic Party in the United States might do the same.

Warnings about Obama's policies being "European" are easy to parody. The American comedy television program "The Daily Show" sent one of its correspondents to Sweden who was mock-shocked by how happy Swedes were living under "European socialism." The risk, however, is that Europeans may be disappointed when Obama's policies do not mirror their own, and Americans could miss an opportunity to learn lessons from the European experience.

Consider health care and climate change. Obama was asked in an on-line town hall meeting in March whether he wanted to have a universal health care system "like many European countries." His reply was revealing: a "universal health care system is our goal," but "whether we do it exactly the way European countries do or Canada does is a different question." He noted that decades of employer-based health care make it difficult to jettison this system overnight for a new single-payer system and instead called for addressing gaps within the existing system.

But in fact there is no single model of health care system in Europe, where universal health care was achieved through incremental policy changes building on different institutional legacies rather than by legislative fiat, as Atul Gawande noted recently in the New Yorker. While the UK built its National Health Service out of its hospital system after World War II, France expanded pre-existing payroll taxes to fund multiple independent, not-for-profit, local insurance funds, and Switzerland required its citizens to purchase health care from among private insurance options. The path to universal health care in the United States may reflect this European experience of incremental change, even if not in the way that some American critics warn about increased state intervention.

Obama has said that he wants to make the United States "a leader on climate change." He has lifted Bush administration restrictions on states that sought to adopt stricter standards on emissions, permitted the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants, and built his budget around anticipated revenues from a cap on carbon emissions. For his signature on a new treaty on climate change to have any credibility, however, he will need legislation from Congress, where his call for a cap and trade program has already run into opposition with a very short time to go before the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December.

The danger is that momentum for progress on climate change could be jeopardized if Europeans evaluate the United States' steps toward new legislation at the end of the year by standards it is unlikely to meet. Just as the European Union's reaffirmation of its climate goals last year relied on compromises for heavy industry and new member states whose economies are less developed, there will surely be compromises in legislation adopted in the United States that reflect adaptations for regional economic differences within the country.

President Obama's policies are likely to reflect the distinctly American legacies he faces in health care and climate change. Warnings about the menace of "European" policies obscure the fact that significant elements in both health care and climate change policies in Europe rely on competition and market mechanisms. Americans could profit from lessons learned in the European experience of building a carbon market, for example, where the initial allocation of credits to industry predictably overestimated historical emissions and the carbon market was flooded, leading to a collapse in the price of carbon emissions in 2006.

While Obama's first hundred days were a flurry of policy activity, the legislative process to accomplish those goals will move more slowly, even with Democratic majorities in the U.S. Congress. Obama will need votes from senators and representatives from coal and industrial states concerned about higher energy costs during an economic downturn, and partisanship has not vanished from the American political landscape.

Managing his agenda will call on Obama's powers of persuasion and the willingness to compromise, consistent with his stated desire to govern as a pragmatist. Ultimately, Obama's policies will probably not mirror Europe's policies, nor resemble American warnings of big government. What they will share is a process of incremental change that reflects institutional legacies and compromises among competing interests. This is good news. It's how democracies work.

John K. Glenn is senior non-resident fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.