Barack Obama was supposed to be America’s answer to the suave,
European head of state. A debonair gentleman of the world, he
would charm even the most sophisticated foreign leaders and
prove, finally, that the United States is developed culturally,
not just economically.
Then he gave some DVDs.
Ian Drury of London’s Daily Mail wrote on March 8,
“As he headed back home from Washington, Gordon Brown must have
rummaged through his party bag with disappointment.
“Because all he got was a set of DVDs. Barack Obama,
a box set of 25 classic American films — a gift about as
exciting as a pair of socks.”
Brown had given Obama a set of pens made from part of the HMS
Gannet, a Victorian-era anti-slave ship. A desk
that has sat in the Oval Office since 1880 was made from the
timbers of the HMS Resolute, the Gannet’s
sister ship. It was a stunningly thoughtful and unique gift left
unreciprocated.
But even worse, Obama refused to hold a joint press conference
with Brown or invite him for an official White House dinner. And
to top it all off, he sent back a bust of Churchill that was lent
to the White House after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Russia Today wrote that week, “Despite Barack
Obama’s eloquent elocution, ivy school credentials and electric
charisma, there is talk that he lacks the most crucial element of
any great leader: judgment.”
Since March, Obama’s social gaffes have continued. In April he
bowed to the Saudi king; in July he was photographed staring at
the rear end of a 16-year-old girl and suggested that Cambridge
Police Officer James Crowley was stupid; in October he refused to
meet with the Dalai Lama; in September he refused five requests
from Gordon Brown for a one-on-one meeting but found time to fly
to Copenhagen to promote Chicago’s Olympic bid; and this month he
sent Hillary Clinton to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall
of the Berlin Wall, then topped it all with an obsequious bow to
the emperor of Japan.
Obama cannot even blame the Japan bow on proper protocol. It was
anything but proper. It was so inappropriate that it even
offended the Japanese.
President Bush supposedly offended the rest of the world with his
cowboy chauvinism, but at least he followed proper etiquette
while telling the leaders of other countries that America was
going to go its own way. Obama doesn’t even know to invite the
Prime Minister of Great Britain to a state dinner. He doesn’t
even bother to learn the proper way to greet kings and emperors.
For all of George W. Bush’s swagger, it is Barack Obama who has
systematically offended three major allies — Britain, Germany
and Japan — in the span of nine months, needlessly straining
important relationships and making his country look
simultaneously backward and arrogant.
The reason for this is simple and obvious: Obama’s singular
arrogance. Only arrogance can explain the way Obama has treated
Gordon Brown. Only arrogance can explain the president’s snubbing
of Germany and repeated refusal to learn the proper protocol for
greeting other world leaders.
Obama might be cultivating world opinion by insulting his own
country in speech after speech and undermining its interests with
his foreign policy, but the joke is on him. For his transparent
disdain for other world leaders and customs is making him every
bit the image of the buffoonish American president he tries so
hard to convince the world he is not.
