Illustration by KAL

A SPECTRE is haunting the United States—the spectre of Europe. Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, the grand old man of the party, and Mike Pence, one of its firebrands, say that Barack Obama's Democrats are imposing “European-style socialism” on America. “As they try to pull us in the direction of government-dominated Europe,” says Mitt Romney, arguably the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2012, “we're going to have to fight as never before to make sure that America stays America.”

This sort of sentiment is not confined to the cave-dwellers of the right. Roger Cohen, a liberal New York Times columnist, worries that “one France is enough”. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economist, says “I take the 2008 US elections as marking a turn toward continental Europe.” Six years after Robert Kagan claimed that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus”, there is a growing feeling that the two planets are destined to merge.

But are they? They are certainly getting a bit closer. Mr Obama is raising taxes on the rich, bailing out failed businesses, tackling climate change and dramatically increasing public spending. A decade ago American government spending stood at 34.3% of GDP compared with 48.2% in the euro zone, a gap of 14 points; in 2010 it is expected to be 39.9% of GDP compared with 47.1%, a gap of less than eight points, according to Newsweek.

What is more, Mr Obama's rise has coincided with a softening of American exceptionalism. America is unlikely to repeat George Bush's America über alles foreign policy in the near future. A growing number of states have imposed moratoriums on the death penalty. Support is growing for everything leftish, from tackling global warming to letting gays marry.

Still, the two planets have a very long way to travel before they meet. Consider a horrific event at a First Baptist Church in Illinois on March 8th. An unknown assailant pulled out a semi-automatic weapon and started firing at the preacher. The preacher managed to deflect the gunman's first four rounds using his Bible, sending a confetti-like spray of paper into the air, but was eventually felled. That is not the sort of thing that goes on of a Sunday in Tunbridge Wells.

There is nothing particularly “European” or “socialist” about Mr Obama's stimulus package. Countries the world over are spending public money in a bid to boost demand and shore up the banks. Indeed, some of the most stubborn resistance to deficit financing has come from Europe, particularly from Germany and the EU finance ministers. Messrs Gingrich and Romney might note that the man who set this ball rolling was not Mr Obama but Mr Bush, the most un-European politician imaginable.

What about Mr Obama's plans to raise taxes and redirect social policy? There are plenty of plausible criticisms of these (such as the fact that his numbers do not add up), but the idea that they entail “full-scale Europeanisation”, as Mark Steyn, a columnist, argues, is one of the least persuasive. Mr Obama's budget will return the top tax rates to 36% and 39.6%—back to where they were during Bill Clinton's administration. Mr Clinton ended up presiding over the high-tech boom and a surge in the number of small businesses. Mr Obama has eschewed the single-payer model of health-care reform long advocated by the European-minded left; he wants to use public insurance to supplement the private system, not supplant it. Many of the strongest supporters of his health-care reforms are business people who are being crushed by the exorbitant cost of health care.

For all Europe's Obamamania Mr Obama is, in fact, one of the least European-minded of American presidents. JFK studied at the London School of Economics with Harold Laski, a leading British socialist. Bill Clinton went to Oxford University and surrounded himself with Rhodes scholars who liked to discuss the German educational model. John Kerry was famously not just French-speaking but also “French-looking”.

Mr Obama's roots lie in Kenya, Indonesia and Kansas—any continent but Europe. His two books hardly mention Europe at all. “The Audacity of Hope” includes a disparaging reference to the idea that America should “round up the United Kingdom and Togo” as supporters—and then do as it pleases. The only European country that gets a mention in the index under “Foreign policy, US” is Ukraine—and that nation gets less space than Indonesia.

Consider the converse

The fury about “European socialism” is not just wrong as a matter of fact. It is foolish as a matter of policy. Europe has plenty of things to teach the United States (particularly about running a welfare state), just as America has plenty to teach Europe (particularly about igniting entrepreneurialism). Indeed, a more telling criticism of the Obama administration is not that it is borrowing too much from Europe but that it is learning too little.

Sweden and the Netherlands have a comprehensive system of school choice (the Dutch even allow public money to flow to religious schools). Switzerland and the Netherlands have a market-based system of health care which uses private insurers, covers everyone, and does so at a much lower cost than the American system. Britain has taken contracting-out in the public sector much further than America has done.

Europeans and Americans are never likely to coalesce: their cultural traditions are too strong and their solutions to the problem of regulating capitalism too distinctive. But they nevertheless have plenty in common—ageing populations, exploding entitlements and above all, at the moment, a wrenching recession. Europeans have thankfully toned down the America-bashing that was popular a few years ago. Americans might consider returning the compliment.





Lexington now writes a blog, which is open for comment at Economist.com/blogs/lexington