McCain: "Ich bin ein Berliner"

Barack Obama will be speaking in Berlin today.

John McCain will be delivering his message in THREE Berlins today, via a radio ad.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican National Committee decided to have a little fun with Barack Obama's widely anticipated speech Thursday at Berlin's Victory Column. It is airing anti-Obama ads in Berlin's namesakes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire.

Not a lot of audience reach in these tiny radio markets, but certainly a poke in the ribs to Obama.

The 60-second ad accuses Obama of voting against allocating money for military troops.

"When it came time to act, he voted against critical resources: no to individual body armor, no to helicopters, no to ammunition, no to aircraft," the ad states.

Not a lot of audience reach in the tiny market of Berlin, Wisconsin and the two other Berlins?

So what?

At least McCain's audience will be made up of Americans.

Berlin, Germany is a weird place for an American presidential candidate to stage a campaign rally.

TIME reports: Berlin Awaits the 'Next JFK'

The media can barely contain their excitement. "Germany Meets the Superstar" read the front page of the weekly Der Spiegel in reference to a popular TV show, while the tabloid Bild called Obama "Berlin's New Kennedy!" and gushed, "It's like 1963," describing the presidential candidate as "just as young, sexy and charismatic" as John F. Kennedy. And that's before he's even set foot here.

Although the Kennedy name is almost inevitably invoked whenever Barack Obama is mentioned in the German media, there is more to his popularity. The cover of the current issue of Zitty, a local Berlin magazine, shows a photo of Obama accompanied by the headline "I'm black and that's a good thing" — a reference to Berlin's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, who strongly supported Obama's request to speak at the Brandenburg Gate and had once publicly announced, "I'm gay and that's a good thing." Jarring as that headline may be, it partly explains why Obama is likely to receive the warmest welcome given to any senior American politician in Berlin since Kennedy visited in 1963 and made his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

For many Germans, Obama is the embodiment of the American dream and the ideal of a land of opportunity where everyone can make it to the top regardless of race or social background. At a moment when anti-American sentiments have reached unprecedented heights in Germany — a 2007 study by the Pew Research Center found that only 30% of Germans hold a positive view of the U.S. — Obama is seen by many Germans as a symbol of change.

"Germans differentiate between America and the Bush Administration. They are not anti-American per se; on the contrary," says Andreas Etges, professor for North American studies at Free University Berlin and curator of a local museum focused on the Kennedys. "Obama, not only because of his skin color, for many, represents the other, better America."

No disrespect to the Germans, but I could not care less what they think of Obama. Their voices are irrelevant.

(I hope the Obama campaign isn't registering Germans to vote in our election. Could that be part of the Dems' voter outreach? Let the world choose our president. Count every vote. I think we should carefully examine any surge of absentee ballots coming in from Germany.)

I don't recall German candidates coming to the U.S. to campaign. When was the last time a German politician held a political campaign rally at the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument or Mount Rushmore?

When did American media passionately promote a German candidate for political office? When did Americans swoon over a German politician?

Note to Berlin: Obama is not the president of the United States.