What Germans Don’t Understand About America

Ambassador Murphy at the American Academy

Berlin, January 25, 2012
Ambassador Philip D. Murphy

Video

Gary, thank you for giving me this opportunity to launch this discussion about Germans and Americans.  There is so much that Germans and Americans have in common.  I truly believe that we share the same strong convictions about the core values that define our countries – values like freedom, tolerance and democracy.  Our relationship has been formed by centuries of immigration and trade.  The past several decades of world history have shaped that relationship into a partnership that is global in scope and responsibility.  We are so close and know each other so well.  Nevertheless there are some things that we just don’t seem to get – and that goes for both Americans and Germans.  Here on this side of the Atlantic, that often translates into headlines like “Die Amis, die Spinnen.”  And in fact, that was the headline for an excerpt from a recent book by Christoph von Marschall on American politics that the Tagesspiegel ran earlier this month.  Last week, I joined Herr Dr. von Marschall and Herr Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier in a panel discussion about the elections this year in the U.S. – and we discussed some of these misunderstandings.  But I welcome this opportunity to continue that discussion, ladies and gentlemen, with you the friends of the American Academy.  And as friends of the American Academy, I know that you are also friends of America.

To be honest, an open frank discussion about what Germans and Americans know and don’t know about each other and what we can learn from each other is something that I have wanted to do even before I left the U.S, as I started preparing to come to Berlin.  That summer, my wife Tammy and I talked a lot about what we could and would do when we got to Germany.  That summer, we also discovered there that we had a lot to learn about the State Department way of doing things.  But we had more on our minds than diplomatic protocol and procedure.  There was also some time for some more conceptual thinking.  So please imagine me during that period, still in the United States, commuting back and forth between Washington and our home in New Jersey, reading up on the transatlantic relationship.  One of the books that I re-visited that particularly resonated was Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

That may indeed be one of the first things that Germans don’t understand about Americans.  Why does this treatise by a French aristocrat, written almost two hundred years ago, still mean so much to us?  One reason is probably that Tocqueville liked us – in contrast to the prevailing opinions of many in 19th century Europe.  According to Leo Damrosch, a modern-day Tocqueville scholar from my alma mater, Harvard, many Europeans thought Americans were, and I quote from Dr. Damrosch’s research, “provincial boors, violent, obsessed with money, and constantly spitting dirty brown tobacco juice.”  As you know, apart from the piece about chewing tobacco (21st century Americans indulge in other vices), some folks may still agree with his analysis.

But during his tour through 17 of the 24 states that then made up America, Tocqueville discovered another side of America.  The basic purpose of his trip was comparative.  The four decades after the French Revolution were defined by political turbulence both in his native country and in other parts of Europe.  There was still an uneasy tension between absolute monarchies and more democratic forms of government and Tocqueville saw a model for Europe's future in the bold American experiment.

In this respect, Tocqueville agreed with Goethe who wrote, at about the same time: “America, you are better off than our ancient continent. … Use your time with confidence! And if your children write poetry, may a kindly fate guard them from writing stories of knights, robbers and ghosts.”

Tocqueville too recognized that implicit in the concepts of equality and freedom that defined America was a belief, indeed a passion, about the potential the future could bring, not the history of a distant past.  These are the ideas that have defined America’s history.  They have influenced America’s judicial, economic, educational, and religious systems.  Throughout history, they have been progressively institutionalized, internalized, and also sometimes distorted.  And to be honest, sometime the principles of equality and the economic, religious and cultural freedoms that are America’s greatest strengths are also its most notable vulnerabilities.  Why?  Because we have set such a high standard for ourselves.

Tocqueville was not blind to some of the defects of American democracy.  Women were not thought to have any role in political life; and slavery and racism were the uninvited guests at democracy's seemingly so bountiful table.  Tocqueville found a country that boasted of loving freedom, while enslaving Africans and killing its native people.  And today, nearly 200 years later, when I participate in town hall discussions with students around this country, I am often asked what is so exceptional about America, a country that claims to be defined by freedom and justice but that was founded in the midst of slavery and which resulted in the destruction of much of native American life.  Those repugnant chapters remain with us to this day. 

But America has always been a work in progress.  As President Obama often says, we try to perfect a better union each and every day.  It took decades, rather centuries, but circles of opportunity were expanded that have made it possible for hard work and responsibility to be rewarded no matter where people come from or what color their skin is or what their religious beliefs may be.  The Constitution was amended to make sure America’s landscape was an even playing field for all but still there is a basic premise in American society.   If you work hard and play by the rules, you will prosper; if you innovate, if you create and build, there is no limit on what you can achieve.  That basic premise is the heart of the American Dream – a dream, an idea – that reverberates across the 50 states of the Union in all their broad diversity and indeed around the world.  America is, and remains, a beacon of freedom, a true opportunity society where everybody has the chance to succeed. 

Young people call me on this premise as well.  “Mr. Ambassador,” they ask, “isn’t inequality part of the debate in the election campaign that is starting up in the United States?   And by the way, why are Americans so optimistic?   Don’t tell us that everybody in America really has the chance to succeed if they only try.”   “Well,” I answer, “Optimism is in our DNA.  It is part of who we are as a people.  We don’t give up.”

And by the way, I also tell them that optimism is not a totally unknown commodity here in Germany.  I could quote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe again on this topic but instead let me cite Theodor Heuss, the first federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany, who once said, “The only thing thing on which nothing grows is pessimism.”  (This quote works better in German:  „Der einzige Mist, auf dem nichts wächst, ist der Pessimist.” )

I think that most of my fellow Americans would agree with Theodor Heuss.  America’s less fortunate citizens still dream of a better life and as you might expect, the dreams vary according to the dreamer – although not in the way you might expect.  Census figures show that all American workers slid backward in the past few years as a result of the financial crisis and recession.  Median income fell by over six percent between 2007 and 2010 but the drop was even greater for both African-Americans and Latinos. 

Considering also that overall in 2010, income for blacks and Latinos remained considerably lower than the median American income – in the range of 30 to 40 percent lower  – you might expect that they would be discouraged.  No!

The polls suggest that minorities believe they are still advancing toward their economic dreams.  Latinos and blacks are more likely than whites to say that their own economic opportunity exceeds that of their parents’.   And they are more than twice as likely to say that their children will have more opportunity than they did.  At one level, Dr. Martin Luther King’s words about the dream he had for his four little children live on – “that they would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”   At another level, it is a stark reminder of our history and that we remain on the long road to equality.

Call it an “optimism gap” but economic momentum is an important element of how society works in the United States.  Working-class whites are already more prosperous and secure than working-class minorities.  In the face of economic downturn, they are less optimistic because they don’t believe they’re climbing anymore.  Minorities, however, were and are steadily pushing their way into the middle class.  Three out of five working-class blacks and Latinos say they haven’t yet achieved the American Dream but they expect to in their lifetimes, even if the ascent is again – largely due to dark chapters in our collective history – steeper right now.

Germans are often struck – sometimes for good, sometimes for bad – by the energy, enthusiasm, and confidence that Americans feel when it comes to the future of their country and their own personal futures.  When Ronald Reagan proclaimed that "Today is better than yesterday, and tomorrow will be better than today," there were no snickers or questions raised – even though those were also not the best of times, in terms of the economy.  Americans believe that the future can be better and that they are responsible for doing their best to make it that way.  It is an attitude that is both infectious and attractive; and I believe that it accounts for much of America’s dynamism, even if it can sometimes be irritating.  The philosopher Isaiah Berlin described Americans as "an open, vigorous, 2 x 2 = 4 sort of people, who want yes or no for an answer."  He said that he sometimes longed for the nuances of Europeans when confronted with the  "the great big glaring over-articulated scene of America."    It is this kind of dynamism, however, that has and always will be one of America’s greatest strengths. 

Coupled with the demographic changes that the constant flux of immigrants brings, it is almost impossible to fix a moment in time and say, “this is the America I know.”  America is a constantly changing reality.

Immigration to the United States has increased steadily over the past 60 years.  Over one million new legal immigrants arrive every year.  For decades, states like California, Illinois, Texas, New York and Florida have welcomed the majority of immigrants.  But many states, cities, and neighborhoods that experienced little if any immigration over the past century are becoming new gateways to America.  The seven states that experienced the most rapid change over the past 20 years were North Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Nevada, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Nebraska.  In each of these states, the immigrant population has increased by some 200 percent over the last two decades.  And the same story is unfolding across America.  Small towns and suburbs are attracting more immigrants proportionally than large metropolitan areas.  Immigrants are more likely nowadays to settle in the suburbs, not the traditional inner-city enclaves that dominate the ethnic landscapes and images of the past.  These suburban neighborhoods are emerging as new multiethnic communities and they are having to come to terms with new languages, cultures, religious practices, responsibilities, and demands on resources.  These developments paint part of the picture of the dramatic demographic shift that the United States as a whole is undergoing right now.  We know, for example, that by the year 2050, our Latino brothers and sisters will represent 30 percent of our population.  But ethnic categorization has never been the whole story of the United States.  People tend to see early America as a monolithic whole but those who lived there certainly did not see it that way.  Immigration has always been part of the American story; and that has made us a nation of dreamers. 

It is so easy now to travel back and forth that we forget that a century or two ago to set out across the North Atlantic from Bremerhaven to New York or Philadelphia or Boston with nothing more than a suitcase and one’s dreams took optimism and an underlying conviction that a better life could be achieved for oneself and one’s children.  I, too, am the descendant of such dreamers.  My ancestors came to America from Ireland in the mid-19th century.  In the 1840s, a blight struck potato farms across Ireland.  Out of a population of eight million, one million people died of starvation and disease, and another million emigrated – most of them to America, my family included.  In 1847, Boston, my home town, had a population of about 115,000.  When 37,000 Irish Catholics arrived, the city grew by more than a quarter.  Talk about a changing reality.

Fast forward to today and this particular member of the Murphy family.  The city in which I worked for much of my private sector career, New York, was founded by the Dutch, who brought their values of tolerance and enterprise with them.  New Amsterdam, later New York was, from its first days a melting pot of different cultures and languages.  At the turn of the last century, there was a thriving German language press in the United States, owing to the massive arrival of immigrants from Germany in the 19th century.  I was told by a friend the other day that in the early 20th century there were over 100 German-language newspapers in New York alone.  All of these groups have made their mark on the U.S. and contributed to the fabric of our society.

Underlying all of these changes is an important commodity called confidence.  At its very best, America is and remains an opportunity society, a place of idealism, possibility, and pragmatism, a country where an idea hatched by anybody, anywhere – in a college dorm room or a garage  – can grow and flourish into a multibillion-dollar business.

America has come closer than any other country to fulfilling its core belief that anyone and everyone, anywhere and everywhere, should have the chance to succeed.  That hard-wired optimism affects how we behave at home and also how we behave in the international arena.  I often hear criticism from students (and from others) that the U.S. interferes too much.  We try to “fix” things by forcing our own theories about what constitutes freedom and democracy on others.  And in the end, we sometimes make the situation worse.  I’m not the only one who receives these kinds of comments. 

At the Embassy, we often ask American Fulbrighters and other exchange students to go out to high schools and talk at eye level with German young people.  One American student told me that her answer to questions about “interfering Americans” is this. 

Her German, unlike mine, is perfect and this is her answer to those kinds of questions – auf Deutsch.  “Well at least we try,” she says.  “We see a problem and we want to help.  Sometimes we get it wrong, but we don’t just sit by and do nothing.”  I like that answer but I go one step further because I am convinced, indeed 1,000 percent optimistic (I am one of your stereotyped super optimistic Americans), that the United States, working with strong partners such as Germany, can and will make a better world.  Think back to the model of the Marshall Plan – the 65th anniversary of which we celebrate this year – and how it changed our world. 

Looking ahead over this next crucial election year, Americans will be talking a lot about what course the government can and should take to address the domestic and global challenges we face – and also how much the government can and should do to help citizens.  Over one half of all Americans say that the freedom to pursue their goals without state interference was more important to them than were state guarantees to protect the needy in society.  And according to a study done by Pew Research last year, almost two thirds of all Americans disagree with the statement that  “success in life is determined by forces outside their control.”  Interestingly enough, people in Germany were asked the same two questions – and their answers were more than exactly opposite.  The survey underlined some fundamental differences between Americans and Germans.   But this very basic discussion in American political life is one that you will hear a lot about this coming year.

This facet of American political life is what makes the discussion, for example, about health care reform so complex; and because Germans have such different perspectives on the responsibilities of individuals vis-a-vis the responsibilities of government, it’s also one more reason why they wonder what’s wrong with those Amis.

And if you haven’t already noticed already, at the latest, now, with three primaries down and many more to come, you will know that American democracy is messy.  That too goes with who we are.  Our system of government is complicated and so are our election procedures.  That’s nothing new. 

Tocqueville talked about America’s fear of the tyranny of the majority.  The framers of the Constitution did not believe in straightforward democracy.  They regarded it as a shortsighted expression of popular opinion that could turn out to be at odds with long-term public interests.  Enter that wonderful invention, the Electoral College.  It was essentially a compromise forged as the Constitutional Convention was trying to conclude its business in the long, hot summer of 1787.  The method of selecting the president was caught up in several overlapping debates about the relative power of the federal government and the states, the power of the executive branch versus the Congress, and the sectional division between North and South.  The debate also reflected the two recent but contradictory experiences with executive power:  the American Revolution, which grew out of grievances against what was viewed as a remote, royal government; and second, the absence of a strong executive presence in the 1780s which rendered the government of the Articles of Confederation a recipe for gridlock.

And so, the Electoral College, while an instrument of democracy, has on a few occasions resulted in seemingly very undemocratic results.  Three times, a President was elected without a majority of popular votes but with a majority of the electoral votes.  The last time that happened was in November in the year 2000.  That election could not have been closer.  It kept us all on the edge of our seats – for weeks, until there was final agreement on the results and George W. Bush was declared the winner.  And this year too, on the 6th of November, we may be up late at night or early in the morning eagerly awaiting the results of individual counties in Nevada, or New Hampshire or New Mexico.

But it’s worth remembering that the electoral college forces candidates to run a national campaign that takes into account all parts of our country; each one of those counties are important.  Again those who have been following the primaries and caucusses this time round will have noticed the differences in state politics, demographics and public opinion.  Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and now Florida could not be more different.

And to address the unique interests of the citizens of each of those states, it takes money, massive amounts of money.  The right of Americans to contribute to political campaigns is accepted in our system as an extension of our right to free speech.  Each election cycle seems to bring an important new wrinkle to the political fundraising landscape.  2008 saw a revolution in small dollar contributions, largely through the internet and largely embodied by the Obama campaign.  (By the way, the President’s re-election team is already breaking and improving upon their mold from four years ago.)  This election’s new reality is the so-called, Super PAC.  Thanks to a landmark Supreme Court ruling of two years ago, parallel, non-affiliated organizations can be set up and raise unlimited campaign funds – this is already impacting the Republican primaries dramatically.  But we also know that although money is important, the character of the candidates and the gut values (positive and negative) that are revealed to the voters are just as important – especially in presidential elections.  To be successful, a candidate has to touch hearts and minds. The head often tends to follow wherever the heart already is moving.

Tocqueville also discussed these "habits of the heart" and the fragility of American democracy in the context of the potential reciprocal effects of society's institutions on its morals, customs, and attitudes.

The unexpressed purpose of his travels through America was to satisfy his and his countrymen's intense curiosity respecting "that vast American society that everyone was talking about and no one really knew.”  But the formal reason for his trip was an inspection tour of American prisons for the French government.  In due course, in addition to Democracy in America he also produced a lengthy report and proposals for penal reform.
It is ironic that today America’s system of criminal justice is seen by Europeans – perhaps rightly so – as being overly harsh.  Some believe that this harshness is in fact the product of the very culture of rights and democracy of which Americans are most proud.  What is the connection between strongly democratic politics and harsh punishment?  The answer – as many scholars have argued – has to do with the simple fact that in the United States, the general public in almost every community is in favor of tough crime approaches, whether the issue is greater police presence,   long terms of imprisonment, or other measures.  And since the general public has a direct voting impact on the making of criminal legislation, it is not surprising to see tougher policies than in a country like  Germany where specialized bureaucratic expertise exerts a powerful and more homogenizing influence.  Put simply, that means that instruments of democracy decide matters of criminal justice in America.  Does that mean that democracy has failed in Europe?  Of course not; European countries are democracies too but they don’t put everything to a vote. 

Democracy obviously allows for change but it can be a difficult and complex process in the United States because of the built-in mechanisms designed to maintain equilibrium between states and between different parts of government.

There is also almost a built-in tension between concepts such as liberty and equality.  Economic liberty, for example, may go against the principle of equality.  Or, vice versa, the push for equality may curtail some liberties.  Watch as this debate plays out and runs through the very center of this year’s presidential election.

I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that Germany and the United States share the same strong convictions about values like freedom, tolerance and democracy.  But even in the simplest discussion of freedom, there is a dichotomy among the four basic and essential human freedoms that President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined in an address to Congress in 1941.  This is what he said:  “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.  The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.  The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.  The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.  The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.”  And he concluded, and again I quote, that this was “no vision of a distant millennium.  It (was) a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”  As Germany can attest, we have made giant steps towards achieving that kind of world.  Our two countries are indeed the staunchest supporters of these universal freedoms.

But in the United States, as I said earlier, people also feel very strongly about their own individual freedoms to make personal decisions about their lives.  There is a very distinct difference between a universal “freedom of” – as Roosevelt articulated – and a more personal “freedom to.”  This can affect decisions about education, health care, the right to bear arms, the wearing of veils by Muslim women, censorship; in other words, a number of issues on which Germans and Americans do not always agree.

This wider definition of individual freedom also contributes to a national reality in the United States is that is made up of the millions of individual experiences, beliefs, and prejudices of its citizens.  What images emerge from that collage?  During the coming election year, there will be many opportunities to discuss and debate the global challenges that America and its partners face.  There are also many challenges at the domestic level.  This election campaign will definitely be about the economy, stupid.  But there are many other issues up for discussion.  As observers of the process, we will certainly witness pride and principles, sometimes in ecstatic red, white, and blue, sometimes hidden behind placards and protests.  We will witness righteousness, as indignant and self-assured in blue states as in red states.  If we are honest, we will sense the anxiety which few admit but many citizens feel at each coming car payment or uncovered terrorist plot.  And by the same token, if we are honest, we will note America’s awe at its own power, its frustration at its inability to bring about change, and always its hope that the world will turn out better in the end.

And in conclusion, since I have talked so much about Alexis de Tocqueville this evening, let me end with a question about what he might think about how the world has lived up to the challenges and opportunities of democracy.   Would he be astonished, shocked, delighted, relieved to see the modern world as it is at the beginning of the twenty-first century?  How would he react to the global world we live in, and the amazing new capabilities we have to join together to pursue and hopefully realize thousands of diverse and often extraordinary goals, ideals, visions, and dreams?  Gazing at the emerging modern landscape in 1835, Tocqueville declared that "a new political science is needed for a world entirely new."  Were he alive today, he would almost certainly repeat this statement and set to work.  Let’s do the same.