Posted by
Arayem on Friday, July 25, 2008 11:41:36 AM
So Barack Obama gives his Ich bin ein citizen of the world speech in Berlin and the adoring throng goes wild, which is exactly what you would expect from the media people covering the event. They understand their job is to get him elected. Others in the crowd apparently also received the speech well. The purpose of the speech was to burnish Obama's foreign policy credentials. I don't think it succeeded. Rather than showing Obama as a man with a vast and comprehensive understanding of world events, it showed him as a man of unbridled arrogance. Nobody elected him to make foreign policy. Nobody elected him to represent American interests abroad or to apologize for America's actions. Yet there he was, pretending to speak for all of America. The speech may have wowed journalists and a crowd of German Socialists but I suspect it will not go over well with American voters. We don't want a citizen of the world who apologizes for American actions to be our President. We want a citizen of America who is proud of his country to be our President. Obama's big day in Berlin only serves to highlight what many people are beginning to learn about him. He is not a transcendent figure above politics but rather a callow, erratic politician entirely too full of himself.