November 3, 2009
Rich Lowery
In his first year in office, Bar ack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He has touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing
Bill Clinton (three
) and
George W. Bush (11
). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world."
But there's one stop Obama won't make: He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded.
John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner." On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama is telling them, "Ich bin beschäftigt" -- i.e., "I'm busy."
Obama's failure to go to Berlin is the most telling non-event of his presidency. It's hard to imagine any other American president eschewing the occasion. Only Obama -- with his dismissive view of the Cold War as a relic distorting our thinking and his attenuated commitment to America's exceptional role in the world -- would spurn German President
Angela Merkel's invitation to attend.
Obama famously made a speech in Berlin during last year's campaign -- but at an event devoted to celebrating himself as the apotheosis of world hopefulness. He said of 1989, "A wall came down, a continent came together and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."
The line was typical Obama verbal soufflé -- soaring but vulnerable to collapse upon the slightest jostling from logic or historical fact. The wall came down only after the free world resolutely stood against the Communist bloc.
Rather than a warm-and-fuzzy exercise in global understanding, the Cold War was another iteration of the 20th century's long war between totalitarianism and Western liberalism. The West prevailed on the back of American strength.
But Obama doesn't think in such antiquated, triumphalist terms. Given to apologizing for his nation abroad, he resolutely downplays American leadership.
