FIRST he was Irish, then he was British, and now he's Polish, too. US President Barack Obama, during a week traveling through Europe, used his personal story to woo a continent some feel he has neglected, while simultaneously reaching out to important political constituencies back home. From Ireland to Britain to Poland, Obama – the son of a Kenyan father and a Kansas mother – discovered and exploited his European roots, delighting foreign crowds and inking images that could turn up in presidential campaign commercials next year. “My name is Barack Obama – of the Moneygall Obamas – and I've come home to find the apostrophe that we lost along the way,” Obama, joking about the “Irish” spelling of his name, told a crowd of some 25,000 in Dublin, hours after visiting the town where his great–great–great grandfather once lived. The crowd loved it, and references to his roots continued at his next stop in London. “I bring warm greetings from tens of millions of Americans who claim British ancestry, including me, through my mother's family,” he told Queen Elizabeth II. In Warsaw he talked about his hometown of Chicago and adopted one of its more prominent ethnic groups as his own. The result? The United States' first African-American president connected himself personally to three of the four European countries he visited, burnishing his credentials on the continent after an emphasis on Asia in the first years of his administration sparked concern that US focus had shifted dramatically eastward. Heather Conley, a Europe expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the visit showed Obama could reach out to the “Atlantic Community” in the West and the Asia Pacific region in the East at the same time. “The visit accomplishes its mission,” she said. “He was certainly clarifying that his personal narrative goes in both directions.” That accomplishment may be the main one on a trip that was heavy on imagery but light on substance. In France – the one country where he did not claim an ancestral or cultural bond. But the trip was not a complete win in the imagery department. Deadly tornadoes in the US Midwest dominated domestic news coverage while Obama was away and some analysts said many Americans did not even realize he was gone. The White House was aware of that problem. It scheduled a last-minute televised statement by Obama about the tornadoes Tuesday morning in London so he could announce a Sunday trip to the affected region. Still, while Americans and Obama's political advisers fret about the state of the US economy, the president put in a plug for having space to focus on foreign policy such as the democratic upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa, which dominated talks in each of the countries he visited.
