American media coverage of Sen. Barack Obama ’s trip through Europe has focused on the rock star quality of his reception. Given the celebrity-crazed culture in which we live, journalists are right to be wary of anything political that resembles the superficiality associated with the words and deeds of most celebrities.

Celebrity is thus a dangerous thing for a politician. It undermines the more important aim of being taken seriously where it most counts. Indeed, a cottage industry has arisen dedicated to emphasizing Obama’s celebrity status and thereby de-emphasizing any substantive achievements he might bring to the job as president.

It is true, as fashion observers have noted, that Obama possesses the perfect frame upon which to hang a Zegna suit, and his considerable rhetorical skills make him stand out with the confidence and grace of the old- fashioned Cary Grant kind. Both are welcome changes from the visual and verbal clumsiness of George W. Bush , and they are political up to a point. But this is not the sort of change Obama wants us to believe in.

Critics of Obama’s Berlin speech have tried to turn this command performance into an indictment of style over substance. David Brooks — who has made this thought the leitmotif of various columns now — complains that “the speech fed the illusion that we could solve our problems if only people mystically come together” and that Obama “has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses.”

Even some Americans residing abroad publicly worry that the speech was not entirely attuned to German sensibilities with its excessively rosy Reaganesque “morning in America” quality. It is not the sort of thing that sits well with world-weary Europeans.

The criticisms are not wholly misplaced, but this assessment leaves two crucial aspects of the speech unnoticed.

First, the speech does not seem to have been meant to be an occasion to display great intellectual heft or enumerate detailed policy positions. Nor has it been seen as such. Had it been so, and had anyone really thought it so from the outset, it would have been universally recognized as a colossal failure. So to condemn it for a failure to do what no one reasonably would have expected it to do is odd at best.

What then was the point of a large public speech in the heart of Europe where likely voters are few?

Arguably, the main thrust of the speech was to provide reassurance. The task was to demonstrate to Europeans that things in America would once again be okay, that the United States would not drift mindlessly into foreign policy blunders and take callow and obsequious politicians such as Tony Blair along for the ride.

What attracts many Europeans, especially the young, to Obama goes well beyond his cool demeanor or rock star persona. Obama reassures a Europe grown increasingly nervous about the improvident exercises of American power. It is because of his early and informed opposition to the Iraq War that Obama offers hope not only to Americans but to those who understand that what happens in America does not stay in America.

What Obama represents for many Europeans is hope that the era of avoidable and extraordinarily bad judgment will soon be over, and the speech was pitched in tones meant to amplify the campaign words already well-known among European observers of all things American. The hugely positive response Obama received was thus anything but shallow rock star worship of the sort that many American commentators mistakenly assumed it to be.

Beneath the soaring rhetoric of how we can change the world, it was not a particularly new or certainly not a grand new utopian vision that Obama was peddling. By contrast, it was Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and the Neo-cons who were making the case for a radically new world order. Obama’s pitch seems to be for a return to sanity in foreign policy and a commitment to making globally consequential decisions that are grounded firmly in reality. No more fantasies about citizens of an occupied nation greeting us as liberators.

The speech contained a second, easily overlooked message for Obama’s European audience. The core of that message was contained in his statement that “The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.” This was a kind of dog whistle approach to communication inasmuch as it seems to have fallen outside the usual frequency range of many American ears.