They are going to be saying the same thing this week when Barack Obama steps off a lesser plane at the airport named after the man waiting at the bottom of the steps for Kennedy President Charles de Gaulle And there could be cheering crowds ten deep along the way as there were for Kennedy as he drove into this city that day 47 years ago In Europe Obama will be greeted as if he were already president of the United States — or as if he were a Beatle Polls in both France and Germany — by Le Figaro and Der Spiegel — indicate that more than 75 percent of respondents believe Obama will win the presidency in November In The Times of London Gerard Baker tongue only slightly in cheek writes quot You have to go back to the Beatles first U S tour to find a trans-Atlantic trip freighted with the same sort of pregnant excitement that attends the one Barack Obama is about to make quot Just like the Beatles Mr Obama is a prodigiously talented revolutionary the tribune of a rising generation whose evident talent is only slightly compromised by an unsettling precocity He hasn t claimed to be more popular than Jesus yet but looking at the latest opinion polls in secular Europe it might just be plausible quot They don t really know Obama of course Most Americans don t either Obama has guarded his innards as well as any important political figure in modern times Le Figaro which has become one of the house organs of the Sarkozy administration here ran a 10-question quiz under the headline quot How well do you know Obama quot Rock star questions but I got only eight right missing what his wife dislikes about him he leaves dirty socks around and who he is distantly related to Winston Churchill Dick Cheney and Brad Pitt I did get the others right though His middle name is Hussein he was the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review he loves basketball he made his bones at the 2004 Democratic National Convention he was born in Hawaii he was a community organizer in Chicago his book quot Dreams of My Father quot made him 1 9 million and he is Protestant not a quot Musulman quot What else do you need to know He s not George W Bush Rather in the words of Anne Applebaum writing from Berlin he is quot the most popular American since Elvis quot Rock star again I assume that Obama has the sense and the humility to play down that image Yes there will be one perhaps two big rally speeches one in Berlin to show that he like other popular American presidents — Kennedy and Ronald Reagan come to mind — can bring the folks out whatever language they speak or understand Beyond that I would look for quiet meetings here and in the Middle East and Afghanistan Obama s purpose is to build and show quot gravitas quot — and one hopes to listen He has a gift as Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek an Indian-American has written He knows what it is not to be an American Much of the world is sick of being told what to do by the Americans — and then watch the Americans do the opposite and screw that up At a time when even the Bush administration seems to be following Obama s lead talking to our adversaries and perhaps ending the pre-emptive strike years Baker of The Times makes the point that this is about more than Bush Talking of the bad and the good of attitudes toward the United States and its leaders he writes quot It s easy to be cynical about the global hysteria for the Democratic presidential candidate as I fear I may have just demonstrated To wizened hacks next week s road show will offer mostly another opportunity to marvel at the perennial victory of the public s hope over experience quot But then the wizened and talented hack adds quot There is always the other side to the ambivalence of the world s thoughts about America The rise of Senator Obama is a reminder of what the rest of the world still admires — sometimes very grudgingly — about America a constant capacity to renew itself quot Previous THE TERGIVERSATION OF BARACK OBAMA