From the moment Barack Obama walked onto a stage in Berlin in front of 200,000 adoring journalists and some curious German passers-by, Europe has been transfixed by the man they think should be president of America.

Writing in Newsweek, Denis McShane, the U.K.’s former Minister for Europe, describes the love:

In Britain, Conservative M.P.s seem to have forgotten that McCain had been the keynote foreign speaker at the Conservative Party conference just last year and now openly wear Obama buttons as they gossip in the House of Commons corridors and tearoom. German Christian Democrats from Angela Merkel’s party swelled the 200,000-strong crowd who listened to Obama in Berlin in July. For the European left, Obama is the savior, McCain irrelevant. The intelligentsia and the political weeklies in every European capital seem to have long ago agreed to write off McCain and splash Obama’s face on every front cover. If he loses, narrowly or otherwise, there will be a sense that America has lost its senses.

Call me crazy, but what about Europe’s senses? Although polls here show Obama leading McCain by 99.9 percent to one undecided voter in the Balkans, even a locally grown, genetically unmodified version of citizen Obama wouldn’t stand a chance in any national election in Europe. They may like him as president of somebody else’s backyard — but not theirs.

Five reasons:

1. His tax policies are frightening. Europeans routinely elect candidates who promise to spread the wealth around. That, after all, is why there are socialist parties in every European country. Their candidates go out into the countryside like a bunch of Baracks and damn the rich and praise the poor. After all, somebody has to say this stuff. But the difference between a European socialist and Obama is nobody believes European socialists when they talk like socialists. Socialism’s been done to death here. Nobody’s asking for more.

Tony Blair was a socialist and he privatized drinking water. The IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn is this year’s model socialist. His version of “spreading the wealth around,” as the Telegraph explains, is apparently a kind of socialist metaphor for genetic experimentation.

Sometimes, however, a European socialist comes along to say redistributing wealth is a good idea, and mean every word. For example, Segolene Royal, a very charismatic, attractive French socialist, said it and meant it. Plus she looked and sounded great saying it. But she lost. So would Obama.

2. His views on abortion are way too extreme for Europeans.

Europeans have a fairly moderate view of abortion. In most places, according to infosite Toute l’Europe, it’s legal the first 10 or 12 weeks of a pregnancy. After that, women either must demonstrate a serious medical justification or go to some place where medical ethics don’t exist, like Britain, where abortion laws have been Americanized. In France, Germany, Italy and the rest of the EU, late-term abortions are practically nonexistent because people find them repugnant, just as many of them reject embryonic stem-cell research, which is illegal in France, Germany and elsewhere in the EU. (Britain, home of mad science, is again the exception.)

Obama’s views would be politically suicidal in Europe. Tell Europeans about the creepy political partnership between Obama cheerleader Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and the state’s late-term abortion millionaire George Tiller and they recoil in shock. Tell them about Obama’s remarks explaining why babies who survive abortions have no right to live and they faint.

3. His lack of experience means trouble. Europeans have a well-earned mistrust of leaders who come from nowhere, emit a giant carbon footprint of emotional rhetoric, wreak havoc for a few years, then disappear into history. They prefer voting for candidates whose views are well-known, even if the candidates themselves aren’t always popular. Nicholas Sarkozy practically made unpopularity a virtue, running against Royal armed only with a worried look, a glower and some good ideas. Her positions were as well-known as his, and voters liked his better. He’s still not popular, according to Le Nouvel Observateur, but, since nobody else has any new ideas, he’s coasting.

Of course some Americans also feel worried about giving somebody with no time behind the wheel the keys to the national car. “In the White House there is no time for speeches and on-the-job training. Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002. I think that is a significant difference,” said a concerned Hillary Clinton.

4. He’s in love with failed ideas.

Obama’s a socialist romantic, convinced that to make an instant solution to any problem just add government and money and stir well in front of a large crowd. But put that theory in writing, call it something like, say, “the EU constitution,” and see how Europeans feel about it.

Bigger government, nationalized health and fatter education budgets are all tenets of Obama’s political faith. But this is a continent that has seen more cockamamie political schemes than you can count. Not counting the Roman Empire, most of them haven’t worked.

Europeans know, for example, what failing health plans look like because they all have one. Some are worse than others, of course. As the Times reports, unless you pay for private health insurance on top of your health tax, Britain’s National Health Service is often hazardous to most people’s health. The NHS is so bad — and sometimes so lethal — that one of the U.K.’s principal European exports is sick people looking for medical care. They put them on gurneys and use them to decorate the hallways of overcrowded French hospitals, or they send them to far-off Budapest, where dentists have deals worked out with hotels to accommodate British dental tourists.

The Wall Street Journal noted Obama’s “‘zero-to-five’ early education agenda ‘begins at birth’” — unless of course the birth occurs during an abortion attempt. The idea of having the state raise the kids is a recurring dream for liberals. The Dems claim, correctly, that the French send their kids off to school when they’re toddlers, and look at them: almost 100 percent fluency in French! But speaking’s not reading, and, as Patrick Gérard, then director of education for the Ministry of Education, told the IHT a few years ago, French education is a “failure.” Every year 15 percent of France’s students drop out of school, and three-quarters of those who stay finish without gaining basic skills in math and reading — in any language.

5. His name, incidentally, is Barack Hussein Obama. Sorry to save this for last, but the sad fact is a politician with Obama’s racial and ethnic background wouldn’t stand a chance in the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, or anywhere else in the European Union no matter how charming his speeches were. Almost daily, there’s some outbreak of ethnic or racial violence in even the most civilized European capitals. Jewish kids are often targeted up by “youths,” which is the French media’s euphemism for Muslim immigrants. Those “youths,” in turn, are often targeted by skinheads, according to a blog in Libération — but not, one suspects, in defense of Jews.

Muslim immigrants live in large, ugly slums surrounding large, pretty cities. Their affection for burning cars as a sign of their discontent is routinely demonstrated to the French, who largely acknowledge the immigrants are indeed victims of systemic discrimination. Recently, North Africans have taken to articulating their anger by booing the French national anthem at soccer games. SportVox has an impassioned account. So now the government is wondering what to do — end discrimination? or just cancel the matches? Tough choice.

For decades, Europeans have been ranting on about American racism. It’s part of the unsophisticated set of stereotypes Europeans journalists often use in their reporting. To popular TV presenters like Jeremy Clarkson, every American is fat and stupid and bigoted. In fact, the BBC’s first news announcement about Obama’s nomination was followed by some clueless nonsense about how American “Southern rednecks” might block his victory.

That kind of thing will continue even if Obama gratifies the European media by winning tomorrow. But even then, a candidate like Obama is unlikely to appear anytime soon at the top of a European national ballot. European hypocrisy seems to have escaped the notice of most Europeans. The New York Observer captured former sex writer Erica Jong telling readers of the Corriere della Sera that her back was killing her and that if Obama loses, “blood will run in the streets.” In Italy, they’ll believe that. You should see the way they drive.

— Denis Boyles writes from France. He is author, most recently, of Superior, Nebraska.