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March 13, 2009
How to lose friends and influence people, part II
Clarice Feldman and Rosslyn Smith
The White House has another clumsy blunder on its hands. Is it time yet to declare Obama's personal diplomacy a disaster?
Brazil is an emerging economic power whose respected (and left-leaning) leader, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been seen as a possible intermediary between the Obama administration and several other Latin American nations. Thus the meeting of Brazilian President Silva with President Obama was seen as being very important on several fronts. According to this items at CNSNEWS.com, however, ...the White House made several moves interpreted as snubs by the Brazilian media.
Silva aides said the trip was pushed forward from Tuesday because of the St. Patrick's Day holiday -- making Latin America once again look like an afterthought. Then, the White House announcement misspelled his name as "Luis Ignacio" and put "Lula" -- a nickname that decades ago became a legal part of the Brazilian leader's name -- in quotes.
The White House quickly corrected the mistake.
My first reaction was that I wasn't aware the name was to be spelled O'Bama. My second reaction was to once again be appalled at the attitude of the White House towards foreign heads of state. Once a celebration of Irish pride, St. Patrick's day has increasingly become an excuse for perpetual adolescents to over indulge in beer drinking. To use it as the reason to rearrange the schedule of a foreign leader boggles the mind.
And is there anyone in either the White House or the State Department who can do an Internet search on a foreign head of state? First they give DVDs to the almost blind British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now they use the Spanish spelling for the Christian name of the leader of the largest Portuguese speaking nation.
And to think one of the arguments Obama supporters used was that their man would enhance the reputation of the United States with the rest of the world.
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