Obama in Brazil

After 100 days, Obama maintains his celebrity status in Brazil (and in Latin America, where a recent poll showed him to be more popular than any of the local leaders, beating Brazil's president, Lula, and trouncing Venezuela's Chavez).

Planning troop withdrawals from Iraq was popular, as were overtures to Iran. The first signs of a relaxation of America's Cuba policy were seen as a hopeful sign (not to mention the other “Cuba policy” — plans to close the prison at Guantanamo). But nothing worked better than when Obama certified Brazil's place as a regional power by having Lula to the White House and then, in an event that has perhaps been forgotten entirely in the United States but will live on in Brazil for years, calling Lula “the man” in front of the press at the G20 conference in London. That translates nicely as “o cara” in Portuguese, and even engendered a brief debate on the popular Letterman/Leno-like "Programa do Jo" about whether calling him “the man” and “my man” was any different.

The Brazilian press ranged from thinly veiled adulation to measured praise of Obama's first 100 days, which one paper explained to a perhaps mystified Brazilian audience as “a date considered vital by anxious Washington politicians and journalists.” O Globo vaguely cited analysts but seemed to be expressing its own conclusions as it noted that Obama has been “more inclusive, less arrogant, more conciliatory, less doctrinarian and more pragmatic” than his predecessor. Estado de Sao Paulo said the word that summed up his first hundred days was “audacity,” noting that instead of concentrating just on pulling the country out of the recession, Obama used his first three months in office to advance a wide-ranging reform agenda. (They also quoted Warren Buffett criticizing Obama’s multi-tasking.) 

Folha de Sao Paulo, the third major paper, used its three U.S. correspondents to fill three pages and got its graphics department working on the special report. “Democrat Undoes Bush’s Legacy, But Economy Stalls,” reads the top headline, pointing out that 20,000 people were laid off every day Obama was in office and that just the $800 billion stimulus package alone is equivalent to two-thirds the gross domestic product of Brazil (and thus, of course, way more than the GDP of most countries in the world). It’s a mixed report card, but here (and, I would imagine, in most of the world), the “Undoes Bush’s Legacy” part still trumps all.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/brazil/090429/obama-brazil