Contest: Give the Queen of England a New Present
Rory Cooper /
As you are aware, the President took quite a bit of heat last month from British and U.S. media outlets, when it was reported that he gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown a set of American movies on DVD, as the official gift of his state visit. It turned out that the DVDs were not compatible with British DVD players, and worse, that the Prime Minister had a vision problem that would make the gifts even more distasteful.
Gordon Brown gave President Obama a pen holder carved from the timbers of the anti-slave ship HMS Gannet, whose sister ship supplied the wood used to make the Oval Office Resolute desk. The Prime Minister also gave the President a first edition biography of Churchill by Martin Gilbert. Gifts that can only be described as “priceless.”
So, after this hullabaloo, surely Hillary Clinton’s State Department would consult with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama on the gifts they would bring Queen Elizabeth II. Surely, they would be very special for such an important world figure who was meeting her eleventh U.S. President at Buckingham Palace. So what did he give her?