Does anyone else find weird the news that Barack Obama is not only going overseas to campaign (did someone give France and Germany a vote in the upcoming election?) but is also planning on giving a major foreign policy speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate? That famous site of Ronald Reagan and "tear down this wall" and all that?
Whether or not the speech will actually happen there is yet to be seen. Angela Merkel has been notedly cool towards the idea (although the mayor of Berlin seems stoked) and there has been some suggestion that it takes an invitation to make such a speech and such invitations are really given to other than major heads of state.
It just seems to me that this is presumption at a whole new level. I mean, the guy isn't even the nominee for the party yet, much less a president-elect, and he's campaigning overseas? He can't fake it as a member of the Senate on a fact-finding mission, either. This is pure theatre. And I, for one, find it to be really annoying theatre.
Anybody else?
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Not particularly. If he wants to grandstand, so be it. If he wants to simultaneously signal a different approach to foreign policy (whether or not he'd actually back it up with policy shifts), so be it.
It's a bit difficult to assess the symbolism, intended or otherwise, of the speech before it takes place -- he could be using it to lay out a foreign policy agenda or wishlist. I'll be curious to read the transcript, if this works out (and since the mayor is on board, it will probably happen, since Wowereit has a lot more to say about it than does Merkel), and then consider the backdrop in context.
Do you find his trips to Iraq and Afghanistan equally annoying?
Of course we won't officially know what to think about it until it happens, but I still find the European leg of this tour to be utterly ridiculous in scope and potential execution. If Obama wants to signal a more open relationship with Europe, the best place to do that is in a speech in front of the people who MAY ACTUALLY VOTE FOR HIM IN THE FALL. Doing so in front of an foreign audience is utterly meaningless at this point in the game.
My feelings on the Iraq and Afghanistan legs of his trip are completely different. I'm all for a man who may be Commander in Chief actually being able to say he's visited the airport of the country he's currently at war with. Just seems the least he could do.
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