Horizon on the Prize

I’m beginning to think Obama should throw away the Baedeker for his ballyhooed Berlin trip.

photo credit: me, 1987

He might innocently misspeak and say something like, “I want to have sex with the Polish people” (Carter) or “The Poles are free” (Ford) or even, “I am a jelly doughnut” (Kennedy).

All he has to do now to become president is go into a stall and do as little as possible. (No, not the Larry Craig stall. Come on, people!) Why? Because Bush is adopting Obama’s foreign policy, undercutting McCain by the hour.

In the past two days Bush:

• Sent one of the top State Department diplomats to Switzerland to participate in multinational talks with – gasp – Iran!


• Agreed to establish an informal but very real diplomatic presence in – gasp – Iran!!


• Today he agreed with the puppet government of Iraq to arrange a timetable for ithdrawing American troops. No, Bush did not call it a “timetable,” since that would be like calling himself an appeaser, at best, and a traitor, at worst. He called it a “time horizon.”

As for the controversy over Obama making a speech at the Brandenburg Gate (the controversy, someone suggested, should be called "Brandenburg Gate-gate"), at least he isn't planning to visit a cemetery where Nazi SS officers were buried (Reagan.)

Obama may have big ears; Republicans have tin ears.