Berlin bracing for potentially 1 million at Obama speech
Tue, Jul 22, 2008
Thursday, around mid-day US time.
Obama is going to get his fan mile, too, and construction on it will get underway on Tuesday. The stage has to be set just right so that the TV cameras fixed on Obama will be able to capture him, the crowd and the Brandenburg Gate looming in the distance behind him in one shot. Of course, the senator would have preferred to speak at the gate itself, but Angela Merkel’s Chancellery put up stiff — and successful — opposition to that idea.
And lest people standing in the back rows can’t get a good view of the speech, they’ll be able to watch it on enormous screens set up by the authorities, just like there were for the soccer fan miles. A handful of the country’s biggest national TV and cable news networks plan to show the speech live. The major US networks also appear to be planning to broadcast the event live from the German capital on Thursday.
Starting at 4 p.m., Obama fans will be allowed to start converging around the Grosse Stern and the Strasse des 17. Juni, the wide boulevard running east-west between the traffic circle and the Brandenburg Gate. But they won’t be allowed to bring much more than the shirts on their backs. “Please limit your possessions to personnel effects,” reads the poster, which also warns that people carrying bags will be the first to be denied access for security reasons. Security measures in the area surrounding the stage will be tight. The German Federal Police Office has classified the Obama event as a class-two danger level (”a terrorist attack cannot be ruled out”), and more than 700 officers are planned for the event.
Must see TV.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Tags: barack obama, germany
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:41 pm
Tim, do you think this is going to help or hurt him at home? I honestly don’t know. I think he should be slamming McCain for his “gas pump” ad. Rasmussen’s new poll released today makes me think the trip isn’t working.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:07 am
Ignore all polls at this stage. Summer polls are notoriously bad. I think with the week McCain has had after goading Obama to make this trip, it has indeed worked. Barack stared down his “he hasn’t been to Iraq in x days” bullshit and has come off looking like a legitimate contender for commander in chief in terms of foreign policy. McCain not knowing that Iraq and Pakistan don’t border gives him tons of cover. The list of John McCain gaffes is so big now. Not as big as his flip flops, but quite large.
Plenty of time to bang domestic. If we see the numbers in Berlin I’m thinking we’ll see this trip will be an historic one.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Kind of like the Million Man March?
*Cue Everly Brothers, “All I have to do is Dream, Dream, Dream!”