DRESDEN, Germany - Were you under the impression that relations between the United States and Germany have been a bit frosty since President Barack Obama took office?
 
That Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t trust Obama because he went to Germany during his election campaign and cozied up to her opposition?
 
Or that Obama was offended by her refusal to let him deliver his big Berlin speech last year at the Brandenburg Gate, so he returned the snub by refusing to go to Berlin on this trip?
 
Well pish, posh. You’ve clearly been reading wildly speculative media reports.
 
“They are very wild and based on no facts,” Obama told a news conference Friday standing next to Merkel.
 
“The truth of the matter … is that the relationship, not only between our two countries but our two governments, is outstanding,” he added.
 
And Merkel’s assessment? Working with Obama is fun, in an analytical sort of way.
 
“Allow me, if I may, to … say that it’s fun to work together with the American president because very serious, very thorough analytical discussions very often lead us to draw the same conclusions,” she said.
 
Since they get along so well, why did Obama not travel to Berlin on this visit?
 
Simple matter of logistics. He was going to Dresden, going to Buchenwald, traveling to a U.S. air base and had to be in Normandy the following day for D-Day celebrations.
 
“There are only 24 hours in the day. And so there’s nothing to any of that speculation beyond us just trying to fit in what we could do on such a short trip. That’s all that there was,” Obama said.
 
A day after he spoke boldly to the Muslim world in a speech from Cairo, the U.S. president found himself boldly speaking again — this time to journalist speculators.
 
“So stop it. All of you,” he said, drawing titters from the assembled reporters. “I know you have to find something to report on, but we have more than enough problems out there without manufacturing problems.”
 
Speaking of those problems, what about those Guantanamo prisoners Germany had said it would take?
 
“Chancellor Merkel has been very open to discussions with us,” Obama said. “We have not asked her for hard commitments, and she has not given us any hard commitments beyond having a serious discussion about are there ways that we can solve this problem.”
 
Washington submitted a formal request in early May for Germany to take some Guantanamo prisoners.
 
“There are talks going on,” Merkel told the news conference, “and at the very end I am absolutely confident that we will find a common solution.”
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Merkel listens to Obama during news conference; Merkel, Obama tour Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady) in Dresden)

Be careful this week about buying wholeheartedy into any G20-related spin about supposedly savvy, free-spending Britain and America doing more to combat the world economic crisis than supposedly stubborn, overly cautious Germany and France. The actual figures show it is much more complex than that.

A Reuters calculation on discretionary fiscal stumuli and the International Monetary Fund's assessment show that, if anything, Britain is the significant laggard and that German spending almost matches the United States over the next two years. Here are the IMF's numbers (% of GDP):

                                                          2009                     2010

 Germany                                             1.5                       2.0
 France                                                 0.7                      0.7
 UK                                                      1.4                     - 0.1
 US                                                      2.0                       1.8

Just to add to the complexity, discretionary spending estimates do not include bank bailouts (which would boost UK and U.S. anti-crisis spending numbers)  But nor do they include automatic economic stabilisers such as existing social welfare schemes and safety nets (which would boost Germany and France versus the U.S.  where such things are rare to non-existant).

There is bound to be some squabble over who is doing what when the G20 starts on Wednesday. Just remember the numbers.

(Reuters photo: Juan Medina)

All eyes will be on Capitol Hill today as the Senate moves closer to a vote on the massive $900 billion stimulus bill. Lawmakers added expanded help for home buyers late last night in a bid to attract much-needed Republican support, but it’s still unclear whether Democrats have enough votes to pass the measure.

In a Washington Post opinion piece, President Barack Obama urged Congress not to strip out ambitious efforts to upgrade schools, boost energy effiency and upgrade crumbling bridges and highways.

Voters “have no patience for the same old partisan gridlock that stands in the way of action while our economy continues to slide,” Obama wrote.

The Senate is likely to consider several provisions that would encourage low-cost mortgages for homeowners and shift spending to job-creating construction projects. A final vote is expected today or tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Obama jets down to Williamsburg, Virginia to huddle with House Democrats at their annual retreat. There’s an amusement park nearby, but Obama has probably had enough of roller coasters after the last several days.

Vice President Joe Biden will stop in at Williamsburg tomorrow before jetting off to Germany in an attempt to rebuild ties with allies that were strained by the Bush administration’s unilateralist tilt.

Obama’s cabinet picks continue to work their way through the Senate. Labor Secretary nominee Hilda Solis comes up for a vote in the early afternoon, and CIA director nominee Leon Panetta testifies before the Intelligence Committee.

No word yet on Obama’s choice for health secretary after Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Toru Hanai

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BERLIN - White House hopeful Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin urging Europeans to do more to help confront global security threats included some echoes of another Obama speech: the one he gave on June 3 when he clinched the Democratic nomination.

Addressing more than 200,000 people in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park, Obama pressed Europe to stand with the United States in helping to stabilize Afghanistan and send a “direct” message to Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.

“This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets,” Obama said.  “This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.”

Celebrating his victory in the hard-fought battle for the Democratic nomination, Obama used the “this is the moment” line as he talked of moving past the policies of President George W. Bush and tackling issues such as ending the Iraq war and tackling global climate change.

“America, this is our moment. This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past,” Obama told 17,000 cheering supporters in a St. Paul hockey arena.
The echoes of the victory speech underscored the importance Obama placed on his Berlin remarks delivered during his weeklong tour of the Middle East and Europe on a trip meant to bolster his standing on foreign policy issues.Obama’s Republican rival in the November election, John McCain, contends the Illinois senator is too inexperienced to lead on foreign policy.McCain and other Republicans have criticized Obama’s decision give a large outdoor speech in Germany, saying it had the aura of a campaign rally.

But Obama’s aides believe the speech — and its somewhat tough message of urging Europe to shoulder more responsibility — will convey an impression of foreign policy heft.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke (Obama speaks before the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in Berlin)

BERLIN - Barack Obama may be itching to tell the world ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ in the same city that fell in love with John F. Kennedy for his famous 1963 address to frightened West Berliners in freedom’s most famous outpost.
 
But Obama’s possible trip to the German capital later this month has provoked a German domestic free-for-all — drawing page one headlines and putting new strains on the governing coalition.
 
Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany’s No. 1 conservative, sent her spokesman out on Wednesday to say she’s against any “electioneering” in Berlin, while Vice Chancellor Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, leaders from the center-left Social Democrats, said the exact opposite — that Obama would be warmly welcomed to speak in the German capital.
 
From the protocol perspective, Merkel has no say about who visits or speaks at the Brandenburg Gate — it’s the Berlin’s mayor decision. Neither does Steinmeier, who is the SPD’s likely candidate to run against Merkel in next year’s federal election.
 
So it’s remarkable that the two German heavyweights have waded into the debate with their different points of view on Obama.
 
Their disagreement surfaced in a tense government news conference Wednesday in Berlin where the respective spokesmen openly contradicted each other
 
Obama reportedly wants to come to the heart of Berlin — just a few weeks after the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-led Air Lift — while U.S. President George W. Bush spent only a few brief minutes in Berlin airport getting off his plane and into his helicopter on a two-day visit with Merkel to an isolated village 60 miles north of Berlin.
 
Bush never returned to Berlin after facing 10,000 anti-war protesters on his one visit to the German capital in 2002. Still very unpopular in Germany, Bush went to the provinces on his four other trips. A German opinion poll, showed recently that Obama would win 72 percent of the vote in Germany if Germans could vote in the U.S. election.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Top: Reuters/Tami Chappell (Obama speaks in Georgia on Tuesday) ; Bottom: Reuters/Ho New (Merkel with Bush at G8 meeting on Wednesday)

BERLIN - If Germans could vote in the U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama would win a staggering 72 percent of their vote, according to an opinion poll by the respected Emnid institute published on Sunday in Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Republican John McCain would get 11 percent.
 
Germans have no say, of course, in the U.S. presidential election. But they have long wished they did. 
 
And because the American influence on their country has been so pervasive and their fate so intertwined with Washington’s in the six decades since the end of World War Two (see everything from Care packages to the Airlift, the Cold War, their central bank and Pershing missiles), Germans may well follow U.S. politics and especially presidential elections closer than in any other country in the world.
 
With a feared “World War Three” looming in the middle of their divided country for more than 40 years before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, it should come as little surprise that they care a lot about who’s in the White House and have an amazingly thorough understanding of the candidates’ positions.
 
The ties between the two countries sometimes became even a little too intense. One former chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, kept warning U.S. President Jimmy Carter to stop treating West Germany like a “51st state.”
 
So the Emnid poll is worth taking a closer look at — even if Germans won’t be able to cast their ballots in November.
 
Obama, who is rumored to be mulling a trip to Berlin later in the summer, would win an even more lopsided 86 percent of Germans with high school diplomas and an even higher 77 percent of those living in the formerly communist east.
 
The results are all the more astonishing against the backdrop that Germany has a conservative chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose popularity far surpasses that of the leader of the Social Democrats, Kurt Beck, the more natural ally to Obama’s Democrats.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz.  Fireworks illuminate the sky next to a U.S. national flag at the new U.S. embassy during its opening ceremony in Berlin July 4, 2008.