flickering pictures

When politicians throw a party, their organizers work long and hard in the shadows to make sure people come. Usually this is easier said than done, and a good speech’s impact can be quickly deflated by a TV cameraman’s pan shot of a skimpy, scattered, ragtag-looking crowd. So for organizers, there are a few rules of thumb here: you get volunteers working the phones to drum up attendance, you don’t publicly set expectations that you’re not sure you can meet (as with the Washington Million Man March that attracted a still impressive 837,000 people), and you never, ever book a room you can’t fill.

So when a foreign politician books the largest park in Berlin for a speech about the politics of a country on the other side of the ocean, that tells you he’s either crazy or has reason to be confident. And when 200,000 people turn out to hear what he has to say, well, that tells you he isn’t crazy. That, incidentally, is three times the size of his biggest U.S. crowd so far.

Germans may not get a vote in the U.S. election, but voters looking to restore America’s tattered international reputation may just take notice that Obama seems to have every bit as much appeal abroad as he does at home. How many people do you think would turn out if Angela Merkel or Gordon Brown gave a talk in Chicago or L.A.? Or John McCain, for that matter?

While Obama was addressing one out of every seventeen Berliners, McCain was chomping down on bratwurst at Schmidt’s Sausage Haus und Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. McCain’s choice of venue was likely intended to highlight his heartland credentials and take a dig at a globetrotting Obama, but it also drew an unintentionally sharp contrast between one guy who can fill an enormous German park with supporters, and another who can fill a German restaurant.

Photo via The Los Angeles Times.

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