courtesy of tehelka @ flickr

Prominent Berlin-based Scottish expat, culturist and opinionator Nick Currie, better known as the musician Momus, elects Barack Obama today as the next President of Europe. The position just opened up, Momus says, after French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this month withdrew his essential support of Tony Blair for the job.

Chalk it up to widespread weariness of the same old portly and waspy politics in Europe -- not unlike those that power the US -- but for the hip and wired classes Obama has become a juggernaut of charisma, pioneer of our globalized future and a fund-raising force of nature, as Joshua Green reveals this month in The Atlantic. More than any other candidate, Obama and his campaign leaders realized that the sprawling online networks spawned in northern California -- notably the wealthiest area of the wealthiest state -- remained largely untapped by old guard fund raising strategies. Ignoring this new, and increasingly monied, generation of power and eager financial activism might well prove to be Hilary Clinton's biggest mistake. Eschewing hipness for experience spoke to the old money, leaving the new wired money behind.

As Roger Cohen op-eds in the New York Times, bouncing off Green's article, "Obama has been a classic Internet-start up, a movement spreading with viral intensity and propelled by some of Silicon Valley’s most creative minds. As with any online phenomenon, he has jumped national borders, stirring as much buzz in Berlin as he does back home." And with Obama contemplating a post-nomination visit to Berlin and given Germany's current love affair with the man (not to mention the rest of Europe), he would have a decent shot at the job if he wanted it.