The Lopsided Gift Exchange

I am sure by now all of you have heard of the perceived snub on Gordon Brown and Great Britain by Pres. Obama. No State dinner. Problems with the press conference. A cool reception. The return of the Winston Churchill bust which was offered to Pres. Obama.

I had heard about the gifts that Pres and Michelle Obama had presented to the Prime Minister and their family.... and I will repeat that in a minute. What I had not heard was what Gordon Brown gave to Pres. Obama. Wow.

This is from Mark Steyn:
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy's anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President.

The president's guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.

And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.
In return, America's head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of "classic American movies."

Wow... what meaningful gifts from the Prime minister of Britain!! Contrast that with a set of common movie DVDs that likely have been seen many times before and that may not even be in the right format... and I feel embarrassed.

As to the gifts for the children? For Sasha and Malia, Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister's wife, gave each an outfit from Topshop, a British chain of clothing stores, and selected six children's books by British authors which have yet to be published in the U.S.

In return, First Lady Michelle Obama presented the prime minister's two boys with toy helicopters modeled after Marine One. (Like the ones available at the gift shop?)

To me this highlights how unprepared the Chicago senator was for the presidency. He simply does not understand state functions. He gives parties for his cronies and supporters each Wednesday with musical guests, but does not throw a state dinner for Gordon Brown.

Also, his priorities with nations seems to be accentuated. He made efforts to call the Palestinian leader right away and to appear on Arabiya tv as his first tv interview... but he gives no priority to our greatest ally. He has some on-the-job learning to do. I hope that he gets his act together soon. So much for our international relations and repairing the world's opinion of us.

Finally, for years I have heard of the "dumb cowboy" who was our President. President Bush was often viewed as less than brilliant, but he never snubbed world's leaders in this way. He understood state functions. And, it turns out maybe he wasn't so dumb... Pres. Obama is the first president ever to use a teleprompter for almost every speaking engagement even those only a few minutes long. Pres. Bush only used them for grand speeches like the State of the Union address. Maybe if he had read every word he spoke he would have seemed more intelligent, but he worked from notes and memory, something we have yet to see from Pres. Obama after he flubbed his two events where the teleprompter malfunctioned.

Personally, I miss my cowboy president more and more every day. God bless you, Pres. Bush.