As I’ve learned time and time again from our friends on the Left during my time in Washington, it is the hallmark of serious political thinker to deal in the “larger truths.” The larger truths are so important, in fact, as to justify twisting the smaller truths to illuminate them for the masses, at which point one must Rigoberta Menchu oneself in the service of them. Luckily, the small truths of Obama administration’s protocol slip-ups require not a hint of the Sy Hersh speaking engagement treatment. Thus far, the president has given the Prime Minister of Britain a set of 25 DVDs, unusable on a European DVD player. On top of his initial avoidance of the term “special relationship,” the chintzy present had the British press corps sputtering into their Earl Grey. (It occurs to me that tea imagery for the Brits might be hackneyed, but it’s hackneyed because it works. Read this, and see if you don’t picture a computer screen splattered with crumpet crumbs, indignantly expelled from just south of a stiff upper lip. With good reason, of course. Fun with stereotypes! Do I have a teeth joke in me?) Now, the President has moved onto giving the Queen of England…an iPod. A video iPod, mind you, so at least he didn’t give her the free Shuffle he got with his MacBook Pro. Only the best for a monarch. To make matters worse-and by “worse,” I mean painfully, comically embarrassing- he got her a video iPod onto which he loaded his own speeches. I’m trying to imagine Ronald Reagan giving Margaret Thatcher a mix tape, the outside of which was inscribed in his own handwriting, “Down with Tyranny Tour, 1964-1988,” featuring such hits as the fiery “A Time for Choosing,” the defiant “Tear Down this Wall,” and of course, “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc,” which we all know is the diplomatic mix-tape equivalent of Journey’s “Faithfully.” He didn’t do that 1) because you don’t give mix tapes to other women when you’re married or over 14, for that matter 2) because Maggie would have undoubtedly lost her crumpets in his general vicinity at the gesture, and 3) because he was not a more-than-mildly self-important rookie without a protocol staff. And, there’s the larger truth. I don’t much care that the First Lady touched the Queen, which is being hyped as a faux pas. The Queen did put her arm around Michelle Obama first, which would elicit a reciprocal touch in almost anyone, unless they were specifically informed of the rules. But the problem is it appears Obama was not informed. The Obama administration has not yet appointed a chief of protocol, and was apparently unaware that the State Department has an entire office to fill that gap for them (Hillary: “Oh, yeah, did I forget to tell y’all about that? So sorry about that. Gooooo, Team of Rivals!). Now, I can’t get too down on them for not staffing protocol offices when the Treasury Department has barely enough staffers to play a decent game of Hungry, Hungry Hippos (which, incidentally, is the method by which Treasury decides how much taxpayer money each bailed-out company should get. Each marble equals a trillion!). But it betrays a disturbingly bad understanding of diplomacy-leaving aside any hope for “smart” diplomacy- that the administration has yet to figure out that small gestures can make big waves on the global stage. Of the small gestures, gifts are perhaps some of the easiest to execute, and as such until now, have been relegated to footnotes in foreign visits rather than front-page faux pas. The fact that this is the second gift-giving gaffe with the same, closely allied country gives credence to the first, somewhat alarmist explanation of Obama’s ball-dropping:
It’s another chapter in a book I like to call, “The Frightening Rightness of the Right’s Talking Points,” in which Obama proves that, just like McCain said, he’s too inexperienced, he’s too liberal, and his track record suggests he has no conception of the scope of the job of president even if, doggoneit, people like him. I guess being newly crowned American royalty doesn’t automatically impart upon one the the grace to interact with actual royalty. But that’s why they’ve got offices for that, Barack.
