"Rudeness Personified"

In under two months, Barack Obama has accomplished something I didn't think was possible: raise my historical estimation of Bill Clinton.  Not because Sick Willie was any less of a neoBolshevik scoundrel, but at least he knew there was a time and a place for candor, and it most assuredly was NOT your first meeting with the leader of America's closest ally (via Newsmax Insider):

President Barack Obama hosted his first foreign leader when he met in early March with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown — and it was a “diplomatic disaster.”

That’s the view of historian Arthur Herman, whose latest book is Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age.

In an opinion piece published in the New York Post, Herman points to several examples of Obama apparently seeking to downplay the traditionally close U.S.-Britain ties:

• Obama did not hold a joint Rose Garden press conference with Brown, the “usual protocol” when a president and British prime minister first meet.
• Instead of citing the decades-old “special relationship” between the two countries, a White House spokesperson referred to a “special partnership.”
• In the traditional gift exchange between the two leaders, Brown gave Obama a pen holder made from the timber of the first British ship to fight the slave trade, and a signed first edition of the classic 8-volume biography of Winston Churchill by Randolph Churchill and Sir Martin Gilbert.

Obama’s gift to Brown was a collection of DVDs of classic American films, including Psycho, which are all available in British stores.

But Obama had earlier demonstrated his disdain for Churchill, ordering that the bust of Churchill that Prime Minister Tony Blair had presented to the U.S. after 9/11 be returned to the British Embassy.

In fact, another Churchill expert, Churchill: Speaker of the Century author James Humes, cited a report that when Obama first entered the Oval Office and saw the Churchill bust, he said, “Get that goddam thing out of here.”

Herman wrote in the Post: “This was a stunning posthumous attack on the memory of a man who was not only the living embodiment of the Anglo-American special relationship (Churchill was half American), but of its ideological foundations.”

That special relationship has seen American and British forces fight together in two World Wars, Korea, the first Gulf War, Bosnia and most recently in Iraq.

But the eight volumes of Churchill’s biography “will plainly sit unread on the White House bookshelf — because Barack Obama clearly considers that legacy, like the Anglo-American alliance itself, to be outdated,” Herman observed.

The London Daily Telegraph succinctly stated: “Obama has been rudeness personified toward Britain.”

Doesn't surprise me in the least that Obama hates Churchill and the "ideological foundations" of the Anglo-American "special relationship".  Probably the same hatred that trickled down to his press secretary's vile broadside at former Vice President Cheney.  I'm sure if he gets his way he'll dump the entire NATO alliance plus Japan and South Korea and India into the diplomatic waste extractor in favor of making nice, new allies like....Iran, Syria, Putinical Russia, Red China, North Korea, Venezuela.  You know, like-minded fellow-travelers who also hate Western civilization, capitalism, freedom, and genuine democracy.

A "well-connected Washington figure" (rumored to be Colin Powell) is a bit more generous in his anonymous assessment (doubtless made in fear of his life):

Sources close to the White House say Mr. Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.

But Washington figures with access to Mr. Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.

Allies of Mr. Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr. Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr. Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr. Brown had come as a shock to the White House. "I think it's right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn't quite understand the British concerns and didn't get what that was all about."

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

"That was the gamble these guys made at the front end of this presidency and I think they're finding it a hard thing to do everything."

In other words, this prominent African-American backer whose endorsement Obama spent two years cultivating and who is ABSOLUTELY NOT COLIN POWELL is trying to do Obama a favor by begging incompetence and incapacity for the office he now holds.  "The president didn't mean to treat the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, our chief and historic ally in both strategic interests and cultural heritage, like he was the assistant deputy adjutant to the Djubutian diplomatic delegation for the emptying of waste receptacles.  He just didn't know any better.  And he was tired.  Mulligan!"

Oh, that makes me feel SO much better.

Ya know, the miracle I mentioned in my lede is even more miraculous than I first thought - Red Barry has also bolstered-by-comparison the stature of failed 2004 Donk presidential candidate John F'ing Kerry, who at least was focused on building up our alliances rather than actively tearing them down.  At the rate The Chosen One is going, he won't even get out of office before we have no friends left at all - except the "friends" who have us fitted for a collective toe tag.