I don’t agree much with The Economist on anything, although I’ve always admired their ability to pluck callow youths off the streets and get them writing unsigned editorials in that snotty-Brit house-style in nothing flat. But I must say this piece dismissing the views of yours truly and others on the Europeanization of America is pretty lame:

For all Europe’s Obamamania Mr Obama is, in fact, one of the least European-minded of American presidents. JFK studied at the London School of Economics with Harold Laski, a leading British socialist. Bill Clinton went to Oxford University and surrounded himself with Rhodes scholars who liked to discuss the German educational model. John Kerry was famously not just French-speaking but also “French-looking”.
Mr Obama’s roots lie in Kenya, Indonesia and Kansas—any continent but Europe.

Oh, come on. What kind of argument is that? It’s not necessary to have lived in Europe or affected Euro-habits (and, incidentally, Senator Kerry’s French is lousy) to wish to inflict European-style government on America. Europeanism is like Communism: the less time you’ve spent living it in practice the better disposed you are to it in theory. In the same way, few of those Americans who want to introduce Canadian-style health care to the U.S. have ever had surgery at the Royal Victoria. Indeed, America is full of immigrants whose hostility to Euro-Canadian public policy derives explicitly from their prolonged exposure to it.

And then The Economist adds:

Still, the two planets have a very long way to travel before they meet. Consider a horrific event at a First Baptist Church in Illinois on March 8th. An unknown assailant pulled out a semi-automatic weapon and started firing at the preacher. The preacher managed to deflect the gunman’s first four rounds using his Bible, sending a confetti-like spray of paper into the air, but was eventually felled. That is not the sort of thing that goes on of a Sunday in Tunbridge Wells.

Indeed. But that’s because on a Sunday in Tunbridge Wells, as in most of Europe, there are few congregants, packing or not.

Surely there must be a Saudi playboy prince or ex-KGB oligarch still flush enough to buy The Economist and perk things up a bit?

(PS Here’s the Pew Research chappies’ take.)

(PPS Many readers point out that, if your list of ”European-minded” presidents includes John Kerry, you’re living in Bizarro-America.)