When Republicans claimed candidate Obama lacked the experience for the job, they couldn’t have been talking about potential shortcomings in the protocol department, could they? A few weeks after Obama presented visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a DVD collection that Brown might have purchased at Blockbuster (and, it turns out, wouldn’t play in his European DVD player), Obama presented Queen Elizabeth with an iPod. Yikes! Is the president still shopping at Best Buy?
Turns out Obama also gave Her Majesty a rare songbook signed by composer Richard Rodgers. Whew. But should we actually care? Well, yes.
This business of having an elected leader behave like some sort of royal might strike some as vaguely unAmerican, but it’s important that Europe see Obama as a man fully adept at the demands of the job. And the job entails competency in every nuance of global leadership, right down to the details of reception-line nicey-nice.
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