David Brooks writes as an American in Europe today. Lots of interesting things–and surprising, actually about American pols abroad (Hillary being tough on the U.N…). And this observation, which I wish were true in more cases of American pols:

But I’d tell the marines that I didn’t hear too many Europeans giving specific ideas on how to make Iraq a success. Instead, I heard too many speakers evading this current pivot point in history by giving airy-fairy speeches about their grand visions of the future architecture of distant multilateral arrangements.
I heard the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, in his soaring, stratospheric mode, declaring that we need the “creation of a grand design, a strategic consensus across the Atlantic.” We need a “social Magna Carta” to bind the globe. His chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, proposed a vague commission to rebuild or replace NATO. His president, Horst Köhler, insisted, “Unless we tackle global poverty, long-term security will remain elusive.”
Fine, let’s tackle global poverty and have new arrangements. But maybe democracies should be contributing to Iraq now. That’s called passing the credibility test.
It occurred to me as we left Shannon that it’s always been true that American and European politicians have different historical experiences and come from divergent strands of the liberal intellectual tradition. But now there’s something else different. American politicians meet combat veterans all the time. They make the calls to bereaved families.
That concentrates the mind.