Belated Thoughts on Obama’s Presumptuous Berlin Speech
Given my penchant for long essayistic posts, I have delayed posting on this notion that popped into my head when pondering Obama’s recent “fact-finding” trip to the Middle East and Europe. I didn’t really have much more to say that to offer a simple observation on his July 24 speech in Berlin.
I guess I thought in letting the idea “steep” as I drove across Nevada, Utah and Colorado, something more substantive might come to me. Nothing really has.
Given the speed with which bloggers and pundits now react and consider events, offering my thoughts now would be like providing commentary on ancient history, but still the thought has stayed with me (even I can’t build upon it). It should figure in my next post on the shifting dynamics in the presidential race in the past two weeks — which has shown a decline in the standing of the presumptive Democratic nominee.
I have read a lot of great commentary on that speech, most of it critical — and not just from conservatives. Should I get a moment, I’ll try to track down and link the most insightful pieces I have read. Perhaps, it was some of those essays which influenced my own observation.
I offer this observation in the form of several questions: If Senator Obama was traveling abroad on a fact-finding mission, what was he doing delivering a campaign-style speech to an audience most of whom could not vote for him? While other presidential candidates have traveled abroad to burnish their diplomatic credentials, has any ever delivered such a speech?
For rhetorical purposes, I rephrase that first question–how does such a speech facilitate the candidate’s fact-finding? What did he expect to learn by delivering it? What did it accomplish?
16 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
“If Germany loves me, then I should be President! Europe knows best!”
Comment by A Different Peter H — August 6, 2008 @ 5:04 pm - August 6, 2008
Dan, to answer your questions:
1. How does such a speech facilitate the candidate’s fact-finding?
Frankly, it didn’t. It accomplished about as much as Hillary’s “listening tour” did last year - ZERO. Most candidates are more interested in hearing their own voices and feeding their own egos than paying attention to the unwashed masses in flyover country. Or, as it was in snObama’s case, the hordes of America-hating Eurotrash.
2. What did he expect to learn by delivering it?
Nothing. He was trying to establish his bona-fides as an “international presence.” Given the recent polling data, however, he flunked. Badly.
Interestingly enough, GWB had more foreign policy experience as Texas governor than snObama has had in the last 145 days of his senatorial career. Yet Bush is mocked as a “cowboy” with no “finesse.” Whatever.
3. What did it accomplish?
Besides a staggering debt to the American taxpayers footing the bill, salivating MSM newsreaders who are already in the tank for snObama, and who knows how much pollution from the carbon release (I had to throw that one in to the enviro-wackos), nothing.
For what it’s worth, I find it laughable that the MSM can go halfway around the world on a Magical Media Tour with a wet-behind-the-ears lawmaker from Illinois yet can conveniently disregard the fact that 15,000 cheering South Koreans met President Bush and not one Alphabet Network head was there for the accolades.
Bias? What liberal media bias?
Idiots.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — August 6, 2008 @ 5:46 pm - August 6, 2008
Hillary’s highest profile “listening tour” was the one she did in 2000, prior to her first senate race. There was a lot of media coverage of it, her being the sitting First Lady and amidst criticisms of carpetbagging. It was ultimately successful, inasmuch as she did surprising well in Upstate New York. I don’t recall one prior to her presidential bid, but, even if she had one, I don’t think it was as high profile.
I liken Obama’s Middle East and European Vacation to Evita’s Rainbow Tour. I tried writing new lyrics, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Comment by DaveO — August 6, 2008 @ 6:33 pm - August 6, 2008
#3 - Dave, she did indeed do a listening tour in late 2007 prior to the Iowa caucus. Problem was that snObama took all the MSM with him.
Yeah, I was thinking of the infamous “Rainbow Tour” myself when I first saw the Snob’s itinerary. Maybe we could collaborate on a spoof from the musical by using the song “And the Money Kept Rolling In.”
FYI - Paul Shanklin has a parody of the Snob entitled “One Night in Baghdad” (takeoff from “Chess”). I heard it today - LMAO!!
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — August 6, 2008 @ 6:40 pm - August 6, 2008
If he was on a fact finding mission how come he made up his mind about everything before he got there?
and if he wasn’t delivering a campaign speech, how come it was in the language of the campaign, English, and not the language of his audience, German?
Comment by American Elephant — August 7, 2008 @ 2:29 am - August 7, 2008
Clearly you missed one of the big points of this speech (or the poster and responders here are unwilling to admit). America’s position as a beacon of light and freedom has been horribly tarnished under George Bush, plain and simple. We had the support of most of the world strengthened behind us after 9/11, yet George’s joy ride from Afghanistan into Iraq left most of the world puzzled as George “he tried to kill my dad” Bush found his reason to go after Saddam while letting the mastermind of 9/11 go free (nearly 7 years now, just in case you’re counting).
Obama’s speech in Germany highlighted what people in democracies around the world have been saying for years now - they still love America and what America stands for, but they can’t stand the arrogance of our current leadership and know that it’s time for a change.
At least this post has given y’all a chance to ridicule Obama even more and come up with a few more nifty names for him. Funny I don’t remember people coming out to see Eva Peron for her speeches or political acumen in Europe…it was pretty much to see how she dressed.
Comment by Kevin — August 7, 2008 @ 4:58 am - August 7, 2008
McCain’s people have successfully used the Berlin speech to tag the Obamassiah candidacy as a product of hype and celebrity.
The plan to crown the Obamassiah in front of 70,000 screaming Democrats at a football stadium doesn’t look so much like a genius move anymore, does it?
Comment by V the K — August 7, 2008 @ 10:01 am - August 7, 2008
and you, Kevin, missed the point of the post.
Do you have an example of another presidential candidate giving such a campaign-style speech abroad?
Despite his campaign’s presumptions, Obama is not president.
So eager are you to attack George W. Bush that you can’t see the flaws in your own candidate to replace him.
Comment by GayPatriotWest — August 7, 2008 @ 1:12 pm - August 7, 2008
#8
But you see, Dan, substance doesn’t matter. The libs love Comrade Obama because he’s black and he espouses Marxist doctrine. But mostly because he’s black. Even if they didn’t have a black candidate, I think they’d nominate a sh*t sandwich as it isn’t Bush.
The reality is, of course, they are nominating a sh*t sandwich and they salivate for the opportunity to take a huge bite.
“Keep Tibet Progressive!”
Comment by ThatGayConservative — August 7, 2008 @ 8:42 pm - August 7, 2008
America’s position as a beacon of light and freedom has been horribly tarnished under George Bush, plain and simple.
In the eyes of people who were more than willing to let Saddam Hussein go right on repressing, starving, imprisoning, torturing, and killing millions of people by a variety of methods just as long as he kept their cheap oil and kickbacks flowing.
What makes this pathetically humorous is the fact that these same Europeans threw hissy fits and demanded an invasion over the death of a few thousand Kosovars — while ignoring Saddam’s systematic genocide of hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites, Kurds, and other “undesirables”. The Obamamessiah claims that Darfur is a calamity, but insisted that the United States need do nothing to stop the deaths of twice as many in Iraq. The Left screams about the alleged destruction of the environment by corporations, but said and did nothing about Saddam’s deliberate ecocide of millions of acres of Iraqi wetlands to eliminate the Marsh Arabs.
In short, the reason the Europeans love the Obamamessiah is that they recognize a stupid puppet who is pathetically willing to sell the United States down the river to appease his anti-American “betters” overseas. Once again, European governments will dictate, and the US, led by another slavish Stepin Fetchit Democrat, will do their bidding like some mentally-deficient gargantuan thug.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — August 8, 2008 @ 12:20 am - August 8, 2008
In other news: Day is night. Black is white. When Kevin says something is “tarnished”, it means “enhanced” in reality (and vice versa). Just ask the 50,000,000 Muslims Bush and our brave troops have liberated.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — August 8, 2008 @ 2:43 am - August 8, 2008
Utter douchebaggery.
President Bush, your intellectual superior, learned on 9/11/2001 what you still have not learned to this day. That after terrorists made it clear they could carry off major coordinated attacks right here in America, the gravest threat we face is coordination between those who possess WMD or the technology necessary to make them, and terrorist groups.
It is the reason your treasonous party voted for the war.
President Bush also figured out, which you have not, and as your treasonous party knows damn well, but is pretending otherwise for political expediency — you can never be certain of intelligence, period, thats the nature of the game. That is why President Bush spoke of numerous other reasons why the war was important, its why he gave Saddam an ultimatum which Saddam rejected, and its why Republicans and your treasonous party signed an AUMF that had many reasons for taking military action against Saddam. Your treasonous party, however, has convinced the idiots — and I really do mean mind bogglingly stupid — that support them, that its acceptable to approve a war based only on intelligence and then when it turns out to be wrong, say ooops! sorry! and pull out, leaving the region in chaos and killing fields. Its not. If there were to be any war crimes involved in this whole operation, that would be it, not anything Bush or Republicans have done.
And lastly, President Bush, unlike you and your blithering idiot of a candidate, knows how fragile the rule of moderates in Pakistan is, and unlike you and your ignorant asswipe of a candidate, he knows that if we invade or strike inside Pakistan in order to get one man simply because ignorant sound-bite libtards such as yourself ignorantly believe getting him is the most important part of the war on terror — that a nuclear Pakistan would likely fall into extremist hands.
May God protect us from the ignorant left and all their ignorant ways, especially their utterly pathetic and neurotic need to be loved by France.
Comment by American Elephant — August 8, 2008 @ 6:07 am - August 8, 2008
Great column from Peggy Noonan today on recent movement in the Presidential race:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121813852996621575.html?mod=todays_columnists
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — August 8, 2008 @ 2:47 pm - August 8, 2008
[...] But, he should never have delivered a campaign-style speech on foreign soil. [...]
Pingback by GayPatriot » Do Dynamics of Presidential Race Now Favor John McCain? — August 22, 2008 @ 5:39 pm - August 22, 2008
I am a happily married woman with a husband (Jeff) of twelve years and am really concerned about the prospect of an Obama presidency. I am trying to educate myself concerning the election so that I can present truth to people concerning him. I loved your article about his Berlin speech… I couldn’t figure out what he was doing over there in the first place and what he was trying to communicate!
Also, your defense of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in response to one of the comments posted was excellent! People seem to forget how horrible Saddam Hussein was and what he did to his people. Everyone loves to bash the war in Iraq but nobody wants to say the good that we have done there and are continuing to do. Thank you for bringing some balance and clarity concerning the war and for commending President Bush when so many have turned against him.
Comment by Karen Knoettner — August 27, 2008 @ 1:54 pm - August 27, 2008
[...] Obama’s delivering a campaign-style speech on foreign soil. [...]
Pingback by GayPatriot » The Biggest Blunders of the Obama Campaign — August 28, 2008 @ 12:34 pm - August 28, 2008