"Europe against Bush"
 Europeans are annoyed that the US president is only elected by citizens of the Unted States, considering that he is a de facto world leader. Angered at George Bush, some European politicians are launching a campaign to "throw Bush out of office." The campaign site, Europe Against Bush, will be opened on Friday (page title now says "Europe anagainst Bush" [sic]).
That's at least the story told by the Norwegian online newspaper TV2 Nettavisen, which was brought to my attention in the blog comments.
A new European campaign against Bush will be launched in a couple of weeks. The founder is the former vice president of the Young Liberals in Norway, Knud E. Berthelsen, and he has joined forces with politicians all over Europe for one reason:
To make sure that George W. Bush loses the election in November.
Considering who is behind this campaign, don't expect to find any senior politicians throwing their weight behind this initiative. The Norwegian Liberal Party (Venstre, lit. "Left" but that is somewhat misleading by modern standards), once the country's biggest, is now suffering a dismal existence struggling to get any representatives in parliament (received 3.9% of votes in 2001 election). They are the smallest party in the ruling government coalition. Knud A Berthelsen (picture) is a former vice president for the youth organisation of this party. Until this, hardly anybody had heard of him, and no other Norwegian media has so far mentioned this campaign as far as I can find out.
Yet, it is not impossible that this campaign will receive some support and attention. Bush is extremely unpopular in Europe.
«We cannot just sit back and watch Bush destroy the whole world. If there is only one political issue that we all agree on in Europe, it's this one,» Berthelsen said to TV 2 Nettavisen.
The rhetoric above will probably resonate with many Europeans (especially outside the UK). Anti-Americanism is one of the few things that is common for most Europeans. Thus, people here can seriously argue that Bush is 'destroying the world' without drawing much criticism, and probably many will agree.
The European press is uniformly left-leaning (again, except in the UK, and probably also eastern Europe), and it is the only source of information about the US for the overwhelming majority of Europeans. On local and domestic issues, people have personal experiences that limit how much power the press has over their opinions. For international issues, that is not the case. In the European media, everything negative about the US generally and Bush especially receives a lot of attention, but positive news is hardly ever reported.
If you are American, imagine what you'd think about your country if you were sitting on a remote island only reading The Nation, anything by Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky's blog. That is, in effect, what Europeans do. When particularly sophisticated European journalists want to get "the American side" of issues, they read the New York Times. Keep this in mind when reading the following:
Berthelsen said he firmly believes the campaign will attract massive support:
«Do you really know anybody who likes Bush? How many have you heard saying something bad about him? Even people who don't care about anything, dislike him. This goes for all of Europe.»
The campaign will launch its website after Easter. They plan to sell t-shirts online, and people can make donations, which will all go to the campaign to remove Bush «on behalf of Europe and the world».
Berthelsen is correct that Bush is unpopular in Europe, but he is confused if he thinks anything can come out of this campaign. He should maybe stop and consider how Norwegians would react if Germans or Americans started a campaign against the current government and supporting the opposition in our country. Most likely we, too, would rally around even an unpopular prime minister. We would not like foreigners to meddle in our affairs, and the Americans are not going to react positively to any attempt to influence their campaign. In the Norwegian article about this campaign, we find Berthelsen trying to justify his meddling:
"As a world federalist I believe that all the world's citizens together should elect the world leaders, while now it is in effect the around 100 million Americans who vote in the American election that elects the world leader. I want to show Americans what we Europeans mean about Bush, and show Bush's opponents that they have our support."
Now you probably understand why this political party is a microbe in Norway. If he wants any serious support, mentions of "world federalism" is unlikely to attract mainstream support even in Europe.
Berthelsen fails to understand that any attempt to influence US voters from abroad will surely backfire. If John Kerry should accept funding from Europe, it would even be a violation of US law.
In fact, if it should be revealed that Karl Rowe is really behind this campaign, it would actually make sense. Remember how much fun the Republicans and other pundits have had with John Kerry's stupid claim that some unnamed foreign leaders are secretly cheering on him. A campaign started by some broiler (as we call youth politicians here) in Norway is hardly going to damage George Bush; quite the contrary.
1:58:37 PM 
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