I try not to be thin-skinned about European anti-Americanism. They have legitimate complaints, and besides, we’re the great power and ought to be able to handle criticism. People around the world hold other negative stereotypes (for instance, against Islam and against Africa) that are much more disturbing to me than the bad opinions many Europeans currently hold of the USA. But a stereotype that’s wrong can lead to false conclusions. Thus, in the interest of their own clarity and judgment, I would want Europeans to understand a few points about us:

1. Popular culture portrays the United States in fictional forms. This popular culture is a global phenomenon; it feeds international demand, using international financial investment. It happens to be headquartered Los Angeles and New York, much as the production of software is concentrated in Silicon Valley and Seattle. The concentration of production could be explained in economic terms without assuming that American culture is especially prone to mass production. On the contrary, mass popular culture is in tension with all kinds of indigenous, amateur, classical, academic, and local cultures, including the ones that emerge from American communities. Lots of Americans are as offended by Hollywood’s fictions as Italians and Germans are, and for similar reasons.

2. We are not as culturally new or young as Europeans sometimes assume. To be sure, Las Vegas sprang out of the desert and borrowed all its cultural icons from the old world, in tacky versions. But most Americans don’t live in Vegas. Cities like Philadelphia and New York basically developed their current shapes and characters during the nineteenth century, growing from substantial eighteenth-century cities. Their streets and buildings are not, on average, much newer than the buildings of Paris or Vienna. They are probably considerably older than the buildings of Berlin. And often our political institutions are much older than our buildings. The federal Constitution is more than two centuries old, and local institutions can be older. I am typing this blog in a county that was chartered in 1696, and whose current government derives from that charter.

3. We are more culturally and ethnically diverse than many Europeans seem to realize. I met a kid in England a few years ago who assumed that my children had never tried Asian food before, because we were Americans, and Americans eat burgers and fries. I think he would be rather startled to find himself in LA, for instance, where 10 percent of the population is Asian, 58 percent speak a language other than English at home, and 41 percent were born in a different country.

4. We have a federal system of government, so national leaders are less powerful and representative than they from seem abroad. We didn’t hire George W. Bush to run our education system, for example. He has executive control over only about 7% of the national education budget. The kind of hard-edged, militaristic conservatism that he represents would never get him elected to the governor’s office in most of our states.

5. Many of the awful social phenomena that make headlines in America–from school shootings to the obesity epidemic–are not fundamentally American. In my view, they are symptoms of modernity and therefore they inevitably appear in other countries that have similar economic and social structures. These phenomena seem to be American inventions and exports simply because we have a large population and an advanced economy. Thus the odds are high that the problems will hit us first. But it is an analytical mistake to identify them with American culture.

Ronald Brownstein writes in the National Journal, “In scope and sweep, tactics and scale, the marathon struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has triggered such a vast evolutionary leap in the way candidates pursue the presidency that it is likely to be remembered as the first true 21st-century campaign.”

The visible differences include dramatically increased spending (Obama has already raised more money than George W. Bush raised in his whole reelection campaign); a huge number of contributors (1.3 million people have given to Obama); an immense number of “contacts” between campaigns and voters in various settings (e.g., 37 million viewers have watched particular videos on YouTube); lots of communication among voters; and rapidly rising turnout.

You now need a lot more money, contacts, and votes to win. We don’t yet know whether this new obstacle course will produce better or worse presidents than the old systems.

Before 1960, you had to get the support of political organizations that could field large numbers of paid workers and volunteers, who would carry your message face-to-face and door-to-door. The unions and political parties that could produce millions of campaign workers were hierarchical and discriminatory. On the other hand, they had real social contracts with their members. Candidates who rose to the top had paid their dues in ways that were sometimes unsavory (lots of back-scratching) and sometimes quite valuable. They had proven that they were trustworthy.

From 1960-2000, it was crucial to have a skillful political consultant who was responsible for fundraising, polling, and advertising. People like Rove and Carville were very powerful. The candidate also had to be able to raise money from rich people and perform well in debates (although I’m not sure what the research says about the impact of debate performance).

Now the candidate has to draw support from an enormous number of volunteers and contributors, which is an entirely different matter. Reporters often ask me why Obama is using the Internet more effectively than other presidential candidates. I think that’s the wrong question. Obama isn’t using technology much differently from other candidates, but his supporters are using online tools in greater numbers (he has 776,000 Facebook “friends” right now) and sometimes with more skill than the supporters of the other candidates.

The big story is a shift of power away from campaign apparatus to independent citizens. Brownstein writes, “[Obama’s] aides insist that he has emerged not because they have mastered new technology but because he has inspired so many people.” Part of the reason is that Obama and his lead organizers have entrusted volunteers with important roles. For example, they give their supporters direct access to their contact lists. But surely the main reason has to do with a message and style that happens to appeal to a large group of engaged–or potentially engaged–citizens. Perhaps the deepest question is what kinds of messages have that kind of appeal. Obama’s particular combination of style and ideology is probably not the only one that will draw mass support in the new era of campaigning. In fact, the much more modest boom for Ron Paul suggests that candidates may be able to break in from various points across the political spectrum, including its edges.

This morning, I guest-taught a class of college students who are in Washington, DC for the semester. Without having planned it in advance, I asked them what they thought about the following words or phrases that might be used to promote civic participation:

♦ citizenship

♦ responsible citizenship

♦ service

♦ voluntary service

♦ public service

♦ networking for change

♦ community organizing

♦ activism

♦ political activism

♦ social entrepreneurship

♦ civic engagement

We can’t generalize from this group, and they weren’t in agreement. There was a lot of positive feeling about “social entrepreneurship.” They were concerned that “networking for change” was too easy–it meant adding a link on FaceBook but not doing anything. Some defended “civic engagement” even though I suspect it sounds bland. (It’s in the title of my own organization.) “Service” sounded conservative to this relatively liberal group, and they thought “activism” sounded too liberal to attract their peers.