An Elementary Failure of Courtesy

Ted Bromund / March 23, 2009

Rory Cooper has drawn attention to the fact that the DVDs that President Obama gave British Prime Minister Gordon Brown during his visit here earlier this month won’t play in Britain. It’s worse than that: Brown is blind in one eye, and is reported to be suffering vision problems in the other. The gift of DVDs was not only cheap and unworthy of the Anglo-American Special Relationship: it was also spectacularly tactless.

Brown’s gifts to Obama, by contrast, showed the dignity and care that statesmen – and especially great allies – are supposed to display. The first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s monumental biography of Winston Churchill should remain permanently in the Oval Office, as a testimony to the greatest Briton and the first honorary citizen of the United States. And the penholder fashioned from the timber of HMS Gannet, an anti-slaving ship that served off East Africa, was a reminder of the moral and physical force that Britain and America must combine as they confront their latest totalitarian enemy. Indeed, the penholder may have been Brown’s subtle way of encouraging Obama to show backbone in foreign affairs. (more…)