Obama uses own story to woo Europe, attract voters

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. “If you live in Chicago and you haven’t become a little bit Polish, then something’s wrong with you,” he said at a press conference with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

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.

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