OK, it’s the symbol they’ve been using on their campaign banners. The sun rising over rolling fields. Didn’t catch it at first.
Okay, so Obama’s ME leg is over. How did it play?
No Grand Slam but no major errors either. If Obama’s goal was, as Sam expressed it
then he may have pulled it off. No cheering crowds of Palestinians, a polite but skeptical reception all round, and a few images that will be good in the photo files for future use.
No big bounce up in the national polls but his apparent slippage halted. Could have turned out much worse.
I think the McCain Camp was hoping it would turn out worse than it did. But Obama did just fine, he didn’t go above and beyond and didn’t meekly whisp through. A good move in my book.
I always wondered about that line of reasoning in denying the existence of a Palestinian “identity,” as if the love the ancient inhabitants of that land have should pale in comparison to that of European Jews who have been removed from their so-called “kingdom” for over a thousand years.
My only hope is that Obama really IS playing politics in his shimmying between absurd declarations of loyalty to Jews(“jerusalem will remain undivided”), and his willingness to show some semblance of compromise to the Palestinian cause, but that might be wishful thinking.
It was a real kingdom, you know. Passed laws, minted coins, and everything. You don’t have to put it in quotation marks.
It would have turned out much worse if he tried to do any diplomacy, which would not be proper. The Times yesterday mentioned someone who had been in the meeting with the King of Jordan saying that Obama got it.
But the real advantage is that first, he carried it off, and second, McCain came off looking like a whiner, driving in the golf cart and complaining that the media gave Obama too much attention for going on a trip McCain challenged him to go on.
Which has proven to be the funniest part of it. WTF did McCain expect after basing so much of his campaign recently on Obama having not been over there? McCain is the one who made it a big deal.
The second funniest of McCain & Co’s complaints is that, because an awful lot of our allies seem to like and respect Obama, this is somehow a bad thing. It’s like they live in Bizzaro World.
The McCain camp’s whining about Obama’s media attention really is kind of amusing. I don’t know what McCain envisioned when he asked Obama to go to the ME, but it’s backfired on him in a big way. I guess he must have envisioned himself shepherding Obama around Iraq, regaling him with paternalistic lectures while the media remarked on the contrast between his and Obama’s “matiurity” and “experience.” Instead, Obama goes off without him, gets standing ovations from US troops, an endorsement from the Iraqi government, blanket media coverage and Riefenstahl-like pictures in Berlin while McCain is left ignored back at home, struggling through his canned Town Halls, gaffing away about the “surge” he clearly has little comprehension about, making inane accusations about Obama being responsible for gas prices and carping about the unfairness of the media coverage to a few disinterested observers.
I guess he’ll try to get some camera clicks when he names Romney as his running mate in the next day or two, but that won’t exactly be moon landing news.
If he does name Romney, it will be pretty ho-hum. But if McCain really wants to steal some of the spotlight, he could pick Jindal. You know-- for some of that young, not white vibe. It would certainly get some of his press corp “base” back.
Too late. Jindal has already announced that he wasn’t interested in the job.
I suspect he hoped that the inexperienced Obama would screw up, and create some sort of an incident. Or maybe do something like McCains walk through the market.
It’s telling that the jokes that are coming out of this are either McCain looking stupid or on the order of Obama visiting his birthplace in Bethlehem. It seems the only angle the writers are finding is to joke about how perfect he is.
Probably figures he’d have to spend way too much first-term time exorcising Cheney’s evil influence from the Observatory and the Vice-President’s office.
blinkthrice:
That line of reasoning goes: “We were willing to accept “Palestinian” as a national identity back in 1947, when we accepted the partition plan. You guys rejected it and attacked us, and you became Jordanian and Egyptian subjects for twenty years without asserting a “Palestinian identity.” Somehow, that identity is only important when you wish to use it against Israel. Sorry, your identity of convenience means nothing to us.”
The Palestinians now are not the same people as they were 60 years ago. Most of those people you’re referring to having rejected the identity in 1947 are dead.
Those images probably have had a beneficial effect already. Obama looking statesman-like, getting respectful attention from foreign leaders - it can only help counter the portrayal of him as a raw rookie with no foreign policy expertise.
Um, you can find a better way to put that, I’m sure. 
Diogenes:
So the fact that the newer generation has adopted a national identity obligates a pre-existing government to recognize them, even before any true statehood is established, as an equal entity?
It would be a start.
To what? Peace? Somehow, I have a hard time believing that.
Israel won’t get peace by dehumanizing and marginalizing its indigeonous population, and they do have a specific cultural identity whether you want to recognize or not.
It worked for the US.