Much has been discussed throughout the election season about the two presidential candidates’ European preferences: Barack Obama has always been more comfortable with Western Europe, while Mitt Romney made it a priority to emphasize the oft-forgotten NATO allies to the east. But perhaps no one underscores the wisdom of Romney’s approach better than A.A. Gill–though unintentionally.

Gill, writing from London, takes to the pages of the New York Times to lecture America on Europe’s lost love for Obama. They had such high hopes for the worldly leftist. But Gill unwittingly demonstrates why Obama was leading much of the pre-election polling, despite presiding over an unpopular first term and sluggish economy: Obama was smart enough not to do what Western Europeans wanted him to do. It’s not a bad road map, ironically, for how to win a U.S. presidential election. Here’s Gill on the breaking of European hearts:

Then it happened. It, meaning nothing. The first thing that didn’t happen was the closing of the prison at Guantánamo Bay. Then, the cessation of drone strikes didn’t happen. Then, any serious movement on the Palestinian question or the attempt to curb the bellicosely right-wing Israeli government didn’t happen.

I think Gill is being unfair to Obama. Let’s give the president due credit: he tried to make some of the mistakes and blunders Gill was hoping for. But you can imagine how difficult it would be for the president to run for reelection if he were fighting hard for Gill’s support. Obama has had enough trouble already because of his inexperienced bungling in the Middle East and his bizarrely belligerent treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu. But Gill wanted more, somehow. Gill–speaking for Western Europe, apparently–wanted public humiliation and suffering from the Israeli prime minister.

Obama also wanted to close Guantanamo Bay, before he learned a bit about the facility and its inmates. And the drones? They’ve been effective, and hey–Obama wants a second term.

Gill despairs at how conservative and right-wing the American Democrats are, comparable to Europe’s conservatives and Christian Democrats, he says. Where is the real left wing, he asks? He explains that “the absence of any sort of electable socialist movement in America is a constant subject of incomprehension.”

Then, he really lays on the guilt trip:

But the idea that a democratic president could want to disengage with the rest of the world and to retreat to fortress America, to pull up the drawbridge on a messy world, is the most inexplicably wounding thing of all. Meanwhile, the Republicans would want to get involved with the rest of us only to lay down the law and protect American interests and biblical Israel.

Imagine that. The American right only wants to keep some semblance of law and order, defend our allies, and–most unforgivably–protect our interests. It’s almost as if American politicians practice statecraft and behave as if they’ve been entrusted by their population with the protection and service of this great nation.

Who can Europeans trust, Gill pleads, to keep capitalism at bay and outsource American decision making to the pseudointellectuals of another country? No matter the outcome, Election Day in America must be difficult for someone like Gill, absorbing the quadrennial disappointment that, despite his great hope, the American electorate proves never to be quite foolish enough for him.