It is not simply a matter of stagecraft. The mass adulation Barack Obama's international tour has received, Frank Rich argues in this week's column, is a matter of the power Illinois's junior senator has amassed to shape events, become must-see television, and set the agenda for what politics are discussed in this country.
Why won’t the media admit that they were wrong in labeling John McCain as a Foreign Policy Expert? For the last few years John McCain has contributed to the largest Foreign Policy debacle this country has committed in possibly a generation. Why haven’t people began to see through the smoke and fog and realize that the label of Foreign Policy Expert, which is the only grounds that John McCain is running on, is totally fictitious? We must give John McCain credit though because he did come out and admit that he is not strong on the economy which is basically why he is clinching the false assertion that he is a Foreign Policy Expert so tightly. The media as well as the GOP and John McCain realize that without this fabricated label John McCain has nothing. He has nothing beneficial to offer as the next President of the United States.
When Barack Obama visited the Western Wall on his trip to Israel, I could not help but be curious about what was scribbled onto the paper he placed into the wall. If you ask anyone that knows me, they would vouch for the fact that I am just naturally, um... curious. On a personal level however, I would feel extremely violated if anyone published my prayers. Prayers are very intimate and a window into our souls. If our private prayers are shared, wouldn't this disclose personal fears, cares and desires?
Knowing what Barack Obama wrote on that note and placed into the Western Wall might erase some doubts, give us an unscripted glimpse into who and what he cares about and uncover what he fears most. This note could help us identify with Barack on some personal level. Am I placing too much value on this one sliver of paper?
Much of the commentary on Obama's Berlin speech (watch it) has focused on the "optics" (the MSM's fav word this week it seems) with little on the substance. For those interested in what Obama's foreign policy would be like, however, I think this would be a mistake. I believe Obama meant this to be a serious, landmark speech; one that laid out his vision for the role of Europe, America and the West after Bush, after 9/11, after the Cold War, after the world wars of the 20th century. For a candidate who so emphasizes tomorrow rather than today or yesterday, I believe the speech is a roadmap to what Obamaism is going to be about (What Is Obama-ism?).
200,000 people showed up to hear Barack deliver his major speech in Berlin yesterday.
Many of them were waving American flags. Barack was not booed nor heckled. Nor was he worshiped.
The crowd listened, applauded, chanted a few O-BA-MA's. Often, the camera revealed pensive people, intent people, expressionless, not even applauding, pondering the weight of every single word.
There was little to indicate a throng of listeners caught up in the hysteria of watching a rock star, despite the chorus of corporate media shills and demoralized detractors.
There is much tongue clucking amongst the mainstream media gurus in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin. Was it hubris? Arrogance? Too much from a United States senator, who is a presidential candidate, but not yet (or perhaps never) President of the United States? I say no.
It is the day of my father's birth, July 24th. The man who taught me to dream of unity gave me the freedom to aspire. Leon inspired and inspires me today. Since earliest childhood, Daddy ensured I saw no walls and created no barriers. My father, through his actions, helped me to understand the importance of fellowship. He demonstrated the need to build bridges in federations with those we call foreign. Whether Daddy spoke of companions or countries, he emphasized the strength of coalitions.
Here is the complete speech that Barack Obama gave just moments ago at the Victory Column in Berlin, Germany.
"I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world."
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"People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again."
Katie Couric proved in her interview with Obama that she's really in over her head and ought to return to the happy fuzzy realm of the Today Show. Her asinine attempts to get Obama to admit to being wrong on the surge really demonstrated a lack of thought in the name of trying to make headlines by hopefully getting O to back down on his position.
But this is part of a bigger issue--that is, how our leaders think about foreign policy, and which really highlights why Obama will make a much better C-in-C than McCain.
Across Europe and the Middle East, and even within Israel itself, the view that Israel is truly an apartheid state is widespread and credible. South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, who should know what he's talking about on that score, has said that the situation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is in some way worse than that of blacks in South Africa under the old regime.
With the renewal last month of an odious Israeli law restricting marriage and family reunions between residents of Israel proper and the West Bank and Gaza no less a prominent member of the Israeli elite than Amos Schocken, the publisher of Ha'aretz, Israel's daily paper of record ran an editorial declaring that his country was now officially an apartheid regime. Still, the visit of Barack Obama earlier this week occasioned no question from adoring US mainstream reporters on how the candidate, the son of a mixed marriage himself, can offer his uncritical support to the "Jewish identity" of a nation that bans mixed marriages.
My favorite answer to any of the press' questions of Obama in the past few days is, (and I'm paraphrasing) "My job is to look past Iraq. Of course, General Patreus will tell me what he thinks of conditions on the ground, his need for more or fewer resources, etc. That's his job. He's the Commander in Iraq. But my job is to take his opinions into account and look at our strategy in the region, and look beyond Iraq."
What a tremendous, smart statement.
If only McBush would take their blinders off and start looking at the whole of the Middle East and a comprehensive foreign policy... Of course, they're not going to do that. They want permanent US bases in Iraq and they want to tinker with the oil revenue at all costs because since they ousted Hussein and had elections, our presense there has never been about security and surges. It's been about oil revenue and control.
It's been the conventional wisdom among the beltway types and the media that the Republicans "own" the foreign policy issue. George W Bush and John McCain have based their campaigns on their supposed strong foreign policy credentials. But in 3 days this week, Obama has turned the issue of foreign policy into a weakness for McCain and strength for him. He has shifted the debate from Iraq to Afghanistan and in the process, has caused McCain to reveal his complete lack of understanding of what's really going on in the Middle East.
During a CBS interview on Tuesday, John McCain made a stone cold error on a subject about which he claims expert knowledge: the "surge" strategy in Iraq. In an interview with anchor Katie Couric, the Arizona Republican said, inaccurately, that the surge strategy was responsible for the much-touted "Anbar Awakening," in which Sunni sheiks turned against Al Qaeda, helping in turn to reduce violence in the country.
Sen. Barack Obama said he found "a strong, emerging consensus" for the redeployment of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki telling Obama he hoped American combat troops will be gone in two years.
snip
"America has a strategic opportunity to build a new kind of partnership with Iraq," Obama and his colleagues said, "and to refocus our foreign policy on the many other pressing challenges around the world -- starting with the resurgence of al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
