With Obama as President, Will Americans Get a Warmer Reception Overseas?

This was very well written, Rolf. I believe travelers have a mission to improve our reputation in the world. Certainly, no single politician can do this alone. We can all make a difference.

Very well said. Thank you. I was having a very similar conversation last night at an inauguration gathering. Having lived outside the United States for seven years, my experiences have been very similar.  Most people I’ve met are able to differentiate between the actions of a government and the actions of a people. A Tajik money changer summed it up wellt: “American politics - bad. American people - good. Tajik politics - bad. Tajik people - good.”

I completely agree with Roger as well. As my husband and I are the face America to many people we meet on the road (for some, we’re the first Americans they’ve met), we’ve unintentionally taken on the roll of citizen - or perhaps traveler - diplomat.

I dunno, Rolf. I traveled during the Reagan/Bush years (bad), the Clinton years (good), and the Bush II years (worst ever). While I was never trapped in the people=government argument, there was a distinctive difference in the tenor of conversation during the Bush/Reagan/Bush terms.

During the Clinton years, the most I got by way of confrontation was “Don’t you have dry cleaning in your country?” But during the last administration, it was more often “What the hell are you doing? What is the matter with you people?”

It is much easier to find common ground and to build friendships while you’re traveling when you can talk about the smaller things of life. For the last 8 years, I’ve been stuck with popularity rankings and voter turn out statistics and sentences that start with “Most of the people that I know in the US don’t think that [fill in the blank].”

People have always been kind to me in spite of my government’s policy. They’ve often been curious and it’s an honor to discuss politics with those that just want to exchange ideas and understand the world better. But it’s also been a burden for me, personally, over the last eight years. I believe that opening that conversation with “Congratulations on your new president” is a much warmer greeting than, “Bush. Cheney. What the hell?”

I’d say that counts as a warmer reception, wouldn’t you? Of course, he’s only been in office, what, 18 hours as I type this. Things could change.

I have to agree with Pam here. During Reagan’s time, I had rough conversations re: the US and its wild west actor president while I was in the UK.  And my conversations in Asia during the most recent Bush administration were awkward to say the least.

Now everywhere I go, I am getting nothing but thumbs up and from my last trip to Italy this “I hope with your new president things can change, economy can grow in the next future, we fell more safe to travel.”

Great advice Rolf, as always.

Having lived and traveled abroad from childhood, I can honestly say that I have never, ever been offended in any way by individuals from other countries in terms of what has been said to me regarding my nationality.

Perhaps it is because I go out of my way to speak or attempt to speak the language of the people I am visiting. Perhaps it is because I make fun of America and Americans as a way of disarming criticism. In France—which Americans have long caricatured as being a nation of snobbish people—I was enormously popular, in part because I was an American willing to make fun of Americans, just as the French do amongst themselves. Being secure in your identity makes self-deprecation much easier.

I fear that Americans—being such an adolescent nation and perpetually in search of identity—are so full of self-created taboos that many do not have the confidence to make fun of themselves while abroad. I think this is as true at home as abroad, but my advice is to treat the homes of people you visit with respect and never fear making fun of yourself and your country when traveling. People throughout the world often are best united in self-deprecating humor, and anyone with strong self-esteem need not be threatened by playing up the caricature to the point of absurdity.

And as Rolf has pointed out, Americans are usually judged as individuals and not by their political leadership. After all, how many governments has Italy had since WWII? How many countries have been divided between resistance fighters and collaborators? Generally, mature cultures not guided by religious fundamentalism or omnipresent tyrants judge individuals as individuals. Obama knows this first hand, having grown up as an expat: http://www.newsweek.com/id/180207.

Leaving aside Rolf’s half-baked partisan caricatures of Bush and Obama, Americans’ reception abroad has always principally been a function of liberal/left temperament. As we’ve seen the world over, the left is generally given to a more adversarial form of political discourse. I’m not making a value judgment; I’m simply making an observation. This accounts for the different reactions among foreigners to Democratic vs. Republican administrations in the United States. Western Europe despised Reagan in much the same way it did Bush II. (For a good many people it seems “traveling overseas” means traveling in Western Europe, whose population in the main is to the left of that in the United States. In Albania and much of Eastern Europe Bush is well regarded, even celebrated.)

The more interesting question is why anyone should care about others’ opinions, particularly when they’re predicated on deep-seated envy and superficial political prejudices, as often seems to be the case. In Germany, France, and many other countries throughout the world, a shockingly large number of people—a majority in some cases—believes that the U.S. government orchestrated the September 11 attacks. Are such people worth engaging about geopolitical policy differences? Moreover, other governments have plenty to answer for, yet the prevailing social dynamic has Americans exclusively on the receiving end of political grousing from foreigners—and despairing of the fact! Why?

While it’s an admirable objective, making a good impression as a traveler should not become an exercise in obsequiousness.

In September I traveled cheaply in Paris, staying in the 20th nieghborhood with the Arab and African immigrants.  It was fabulolus.  The French, Sundanese, and Algerians I met loved America and Americans but not Bush.  The Chinese man I met wanted to come here.  Why should people love America or our President, and why should I care?  Our conservative politics are much different than their more liberal values.  Viva La Difference!  I’ve been more offended at home because of political differences. 

Because I learned 50 words or so of French, everyone was helpful or went out of their way.  I ordered things that looked interesting on menus.  Some of it was fabulous, some not very good-just like at home!  The French even got my jokes!

Part of the poor reception is American travelers stay at the Holiday Inn, only eat cheeseburgers and never learn how to use the metro.  You can’t really experience Paris without using the metro.  Tour Eiffel and Eiffel Tower are similar words, and an eight year old should be able to decipher the metro map.  Or when riding back to town with a tour operator, my American companions asked what neighborhood we were in.  He replied “one block from your hotel.”  They said “tour guide didn’t take us down here.”  Did they need the babysitter to walk around the block? What was their intent in leaving home?   

These were the same people unmoved by thousands of graves at Normandy and the playing of “Oh beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life”, which reduced me to body wrecking sobs, thinking of all the families, including my grandparents,  whose sons never came home. 

I travel because of the PASSION it adds to my life.

Bravo Grizzly Bear Mom!

Rick spoke to this directly in his excellent seminar “Travel as a Political Act” on Sunday at the New York Times travel show in New York I just attended:

http://www.nyttravelshow.com/show_attractions/travel_seminars.html

He is about to write a book by the same title which I look forward to reading.

He made one important assertion, I thought. He said that anytime a bomb is dropped by the U.S., it also bears his name, as we are all taxpayers and members of this country. This is an inescapable part of the existential realization that we are all “engaged” as Jean-Paul Sartre discussed.

But clearly the theme was about realization that multiple perspectives can and must be tolerated, and those from other countries usually are able to differentiate between the government and the individual. That has ALWAYS been my experience.