President Barack Obama’s gift of a set of DVDs to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appalled the British media, furious about the lack of traditional protocol afforded to Brown while he was in Washington.
Iain Martin, a columnist and blogger for the Daily Telegraph, wrote that he found Obama to be rudeness personified toward Britain.
Martin tells NPR’s Robert Siegel that Britons are used to a full news conference when their prime minister is in town.
“Only at the last moment was it agreed that there would be a small press conference, and, I think, it was read as a metaphor for the concern that Obama really just didn’t like having the Brits in town,” Martin says. “Yes, he’s dealing with the biggest global crisis in 70 years.
“Still, it would have been nice if he could have welcomed Brown with just a hint more enthusiasm.”
From NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s
tory.php?storyId=101561670&ft=1&f=1004
In The White House, Protocol Not Just For Computers
A lot of people get paid a lot of money to prevent the kind of gaffe just made this week by President Obama and Hillary Clinton, America’s top two representatives to the world. Usually they work in an office called “protocol.”
Protocol and dacorum are the opposite of awkward and foolish rolled into disrespectful and inappropriate.
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There have been awkward moments before at the White House and in presidential administrations and sometimes they cause pain and embarrassment to visiting dignitaries. Sometimes they detract from years of great diplomacy.
Just ask Hu Jintao, President of China, after he was introduced at the White House during a Bush hosted ceremony as the President of the “Republic of China,” which most of us know as Taiwan. President Bush added to the lack of protocol and decorum that day by manhandling President Hu toward the exit to the stage, a “touching” just not allowed — except maybe for children.
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As an American Citizen, I wish to apologize to our British friend and allies for the improper and unskilled actions of Hussein Obama.