NEWS ANALYSIS : In Earlier Era, Clinton Trip Would Have Been Triumph

In different times, President Clinton’s just completed eight-day trip through Europe would have been a sure-fire triumph.

As the leader of the globe’s lone remaining superpower, the youthful President chose four countries that must be among the most pro-American anywhere--Poland, Germany, Italy and the tiny Baltic state of Latvia. He had spectacular backdrops--the Warsaw Ghetto memorial, the 17th-Century Palazzo Reale in Naples, Berlin’s history-laden Brandenburg Gate--and warm, sunny weather to accentuate them.

But as the President completed his third trip to Europe this year, he left behind him few concrete results and a set of mixed emotions that fell far short of euphoria.

“It was a fantastic act of goodwill, but he committed himself to very little,” said Michael Stuermer, director of the Ebenhausen Institute, a German government-financed think tank near Munich, commenting on the German leg of the trip.

Clinton’s pledge of $200 million in new U.S. aid to Poland, made in Warsaw, was more a gesture of solidarity than meaningful assistance; his decision to duck the dollar crisis completely at the Group of Seven economic summit in Naples diminished his credentials as presiding over the fastest-growing economy of the world’s seven leading industrial nations.

But the failure to ignite much genuine emotion on his visit had little to do with the President himself.

Indeed, Europe’s polite but uninspiring response to Clinton had far more to do with factors beyond his control--such as the Continent’s preoccupation with internal problems, the fall from grace of almost an entire political class and transatlantic ties that have irrevocably changed with the Cold War’s end.

For better or worse, Clinton is the first President since World War II who is not the guarantor of Western Europe’s freedom and prosperity. And this change has altered the view toward him at virtually every level of European society.

At the grass roots, this shift in thinking was nowhere more visible than during Clinton’s visit Tuesday to Berlin and his speech in the shadow of Brandenburg Gate, barely a few yards from where the city was divided during much of the Cold War.

Three decades ago, when President John F. Kennedy traveled to West Berlin and uttered his famous “ Ich bin ein Berliner “ message of solidarity to the beleaguered city, his words fell on a people who knew that their very existence depended on him. The majority of those West Berliners had experienced both the horrors of war and the benefits of the massive American aid delivered under the Marshall Plan.

While a number of old-timers showed up to hear Clinton on Tuesday, the President’s appearance had more the feel of a pep rally than a serious political event, many analysts observed.

Numbers also tell the difference. According to Berlin city archives, about 400,000 people crowded into the square in front of the West Berlin City Hall to hear Kennedy; estimates of those who showed up for Clinton ranged from one-quarter to one-tenth of that.

Observers believe the President also suffered from the diminished standing of politicians, in general, on a continent mired in a seemingly endless series of political scandals and other controversies. The approval rating of Polish President Lech Walesa hovers around 5%, much of the Italian political Establishment has been swept away by charges of wrongdoing and Chancellor Helmut Kohl was booed as he rose to speak in Berlin.

Because most of Clinton’s major foreign policy problems have come outside of Europe, he faced little overt ill will directed at him personally. “There’s a kind of skepticism and disillusionment of how leaders everywhere are performing,” said Jack Spence of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. “I didn’t detect any great increase in warmth for him.”

Still, there were some self-inflicted wounds along the way.

In Naples, Clinton’s plan to push immediately for a new round of global trade liberalization in areas such as financial services and intellectual property rights was immediately shot down by most other G-7 leaders as a threat to the most recent world trade agreement, which still faces ratification fights in several countries.

Clinton’s staff had promoted the plan as a test of the President’s leadership.

The President’s unrestrained endorsement Tuesday of Germany as America’s partner in leadership also visibly unsettled Germans, who were quick to stress they wanted to lead no one. “Partners in responsibility,” stressed Kohl in his remarks.

Minutes after Clinton finished speaking, former German President Richard von Weizsaecker was emphatically telling a British Broadcasting Corp. reporter that Germany had no wish to act on its own with America, wanting instead to work together with all its allies.

Germany’s neighbors, however, seemed far more relaxed at the President’s remarks.

“Clinton acknowledged that Germany is the most powerful country in Europe,” noted Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman Patrick Renault. “That’s neither good nor bad. It’s a simple fact.”