You guys had to know it was coming and here it is.  Jeff Jacoby's take on the Berlin visit.

There were a lot of things he could have mentioned and didn't.  The Berlin Ravefest '08 was a huge success, but Obama was the last act, poor guy.  He was probably tired.

Obama talks the talk but he doesn't walk the walk. He has great speeches, as have many who have sought to control a country, but I feel (IMO) that IF elected President of these United States, we will no longer be "united" and he will be our undoing.  The alternative, McCain, I'm not sure of, but I trust him more then I could ever trust Obama. Again, IMO, Obama and the democratic party seem to have an agenda that only they are aware of, and at this point, they are not sharing. "Change" is the mantra, but what kind of change?  Changes to our detriment I'm afraid.

Comparing 1948 German occupation to the 2003 Iraqi occupation is futile, because there is no comparison. The situations were completely different and have absolutely no real similiarities besides the fact that both Presidents stuck to their guns. I'm all for sticking to one's guns, but you better be prepared to accept full responsibility for your actions.  I wouldn't be surprised if a number of Historians write responses to this Editorial.

Obama could have and probably should have said something completely different.  The Editorial is right to say that his assumption that the entire world was unified during the end of the Cold War is rhetoric and nothing else.  Then again, I've seen plenty of McCain's speeches where he's pulled out rhetorical B.S. that really has no truth or reality to it.  Both Candidates are fighting tooth and nail to win this thing because each one realizes that they aren't going to be able to win this election on good looks alone.

As for me, I'm still probably voting 3rd party, who.. I'm not sure about yet.

Witter - I don't think we're united as a Country right now.  I believe it's been 5 years since we were "united."

FSG  = OBOMADRONE

Do not believe what he writes.  As a history major the op ed piece is correct.  FSG is just making it up as he goes along

FSG:  I was trying to be positive!!!!! Probably been more then 5 years :-(

I watched McCain and Obama on the Sunday morning political shows~ not terribly impressed with either of them.Not to surprisingly,David Brooks of the New York Times echos Jacoby~ http://www.nytimes.com/2008...

It's too bad that all the excitement of the early primaries has descended to this sort of ennui.  I guess familiarity breeds contempt, and the better we get to know each candidate, the less we like them.  Better we learn these things now rather than after one of them becomes president.

AT LEAST MCANIN HAS A BACKGROUND TO JUDGE HIM BY!

Neocon~ relax. Many Americans have gotten very jaded about our government~ perhaps rightly so. I still believe we get the government we deserve,time to find and elect those with spines. Time to be much more realistic about exactly what a candidate promises and what they can realistically deliver.Less sound bites,less extraneous stuff(like the Wailing Wall prayer).

McCain's recent history of hanging onto Bush's coattails isn't sitting well with the American public.

Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month -- three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban -- compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.
 

Lobbyist reports show $181,000 for McCain
Registered lobbyists have donated large amounts of money to SenatorJohn McCain's presidential campaign, even as he denounces their profession. (In contrast, Obama has received only $6,000 from lobbyists)

So much for the "reformer".
 

Oh, and that so-called "media bias" in favor of Obama? It doesn't exist.

Haters of the mainstream media reheated a bit of conventional wisdom last week.

Barack Obama, they said, was getting a free ride from those insufferable liberals.

Such pronouncements, sorry to say, tend to be wrong since they describe a monolithic media that no longer exists.

But now there's additional evidence that casts doubt on the bias claims aimed -- with particular venom -- at three broadcast networks.

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades, found that ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign.

You read it right: tougher on the Democrat.

During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

http://www.latimes.com/news...

Don't know what any of that has to do with Obama's speech in Berlin, TSM.

I'll agree that McCain likes to chase a dollar, though.

I've been trying to glean what the actual content of Obama's speech WAS in Berlin but captioning is pretty fickle on news broadcasts and I haven't seen a transcript of it online nor accompaning one of the dozens and dozens of UTube videos. So, it's pretty sketchy to me.  The one thing I DID see was a reporter in Israel asking Obama what his purpose would be for going to Berlin. I don't know that I saw ALL the answer but I did see Obama  say that his purpose for going to Berlin and all these places was to promote good will, a wise thing for someone who is not the President to do.

I don't understand why Jacoby calls upon Senator Obama to frame his remarks to Germans around the Cold War when the tension in Europe is centered on the conlicts in the Middle East.  Does the Cold War require revisiting? It's like these "send this to everyone you know emails" that people, well - send to everyone they know.

One I saw recently was a lament on how we all bonded together during WWII, but didn't do so in the case of Iraq and the author questioned the patriotism of Americans for that lack of a bond in relationship to the present conflict in the Middle East.

But we'd be speaking German now if we hadn't bonded together in WWII and we'd be speaking Russian now if we hadn't unified with European countries during the Cold War.  Iraq is in no way the same context as the Cold War, and Germans know that. Patriots came out of the woodwork in this country when our very survival was at stake during, especially, World War II.  Yet, today, Europeans' concerns are about the stability of Europe since Europe is far more vulnerable to terrorism than we are in the United States. So, Obama's position REALLY speaks to not just Germans but the whole of Europe. Iraq isn't an idiological confict on the scale of the communist and the Nazi. So Jacoby's chiding just seems odd and inappropriate.  Good will was the point of the trip and Obama hit a grand slam. Jacoby is just spinning it as some kind of failure and I can't disagree more with him.

HM<found a link for you,just scroll down for the transcript  http://my.barackobama.com/p...

Well, I'm glad you said that, HM.  I really couldn't understand why leaving out the Cold War in his speech was a big deal either, but I figured that the whole thing must still be a bigger deal to Berliners than it is to us.  Context, I guess, is what's important here.  IS the cold war still a big deal to Berliners?  I dunno.

Thank you Sage!  Now that I've read the speech, I'd have to say that as far as Mr. Jacoby is concerned, you could only take his column to mean something like, "If I had been making that speech, I'd have said...."

Obama's speech did acknowledge the  Cold War. About half  to three-fouths of it used the Berlin Wall as a context in which to remind Germans and all Europeans of America's traditional common values with them in the height of the Cold War. It was an appropriate speech for a Senator to make, and unlike anything President Bush would likely do.

If you check conservative columnists,then liberal,or listen to the pundits,this all breaks down nicely into "our guy" vs. "your guy"spin. For once I like each side say "hey not a bad idea!" about the other guy.

With apologies to BLT(who tried this same approach some time ago)~ I'll go first: I like McCain's backing of the ADA(surprise!)

TSM, do you have any comment on the Berlin speech or are you here just to bash McCain and the media?

Now it would seem that Bush is leaning more towards Obama than McCain as far as timetables go.

Does McCain really want to appear to be to the right of Bush??

FSG  = OBOMADRONE

Funny, Neoconguy.. look at my post history - I've made it clear that I do not support Obama.

Do not believe what he writes.  As a history major the op ed piece is correct.  FSG is just making it up as he goes along

I never said that the historical information was incorrect, only the author's comparisons between yesterday and today. It's no different than when some people started to compare Iraq with Vietnam - completely different scenarios which share only a few small similiarities.

Let me make sure I have this right, you're a history major? What year are you in?  What is your focal point of study?

Neconguy, FSG never said the history was incorrect.

He only said the COMPARISON Jacoby made was the wrong comparison. While I can and do respect your status as a history major, one thing you are called upon to LEARN is whether the comparison being made is the appropriate one to make. If you seek a future in government or teaching, you will find knowing whether the correct comparison is being made a useful tool. Politicos will depend on you to parse that kind of distinction. Our children will depend on you to teach THEM to look for such distinctions so that they won't be so easily swayed and exploited.  That's what is controversial about Mr. Jacoby's article, not his accuracy about the facts of history.

Obama is speaking in the context of current events and Mr. Jacoby insists that a Obama should have done a re-reading of the Cold War era in context with the cold war era, not the tensions in the Middle East.  That's what is flawed about Mr. Jacoby's analysis of the Obama speech.

HM - unfortunately, most people with History degrees wind up working in a completely unrelated field. 

I don't think that's an unfortunate consequence, FSG. History is a very rigorous discipline that requires the ability to capture not only the facts, but the context and spirit of the times that surround them in order to provide validity. The mastery of that ability prepares the historian for employment in an enormous range of livelihoods, in much the same was as a liberal arts/studies major prepares a student to walk into virtually any job.  Such training has a tremendously wide constellation of applications it can be applied to aside from teaching and politics.

I think the point is that a history major cannot depend upon the rote acquisition of a laundry list of facts. It may be the very reason many people in the field fail to sustain a life in the profession. They may be great contestants on Jeopardy, but the most valuable application of the discipline lies in how to apply the old addage: "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." It's the ability to know what to do with facts, how to speak about them, that draws the line between who will and won't be flipping burgers or driving a fork lift in a warehouse. Our warehouses are full of history majors. I suspect Mr. Jacoby is one of the ones who know, or at least have novel ideas of what to do with factual information.  In the present case, he applies it as hindsight (Should-a, could-a) for a political purpose and know how to apply a tone of indignation to the hindsight.  

HM - I probably should have clarified that I actually have my B.A. in History.  I agree with what you've said, but I'd like to clarify that what I believe to be unfortunate is that many who are talented and love History are being forced to find jobs elsewhere because a teacher's salary will not do enough to provide for their families.  The other thing which is unfortunate is that many of us are disgruntled with the way in which History is taught to the general population.  Just about every High School textbook in existence in this country is not 100% accurate.  Much of the material in these books are not correct, misleading and in many cases outright lies.  There are whole chapters of our History which are left out for the sole purpose of brainwashing each student to be accept the facts as they are presented without asking questions or coming to their own conclusions.  Mr. Jacoby is no different than the majority of American Textbook publishers.

HM: Good will was the point of the trip and Obama hit a grand slam.

why heck HM Rev Jesse has tried to spin goodwill over seas for years...why not set him up in the White House if thats all it takes?? 

I don't want Obama to be another Harry Truman.  What we *NEED* is another FDR.  Or if that's not available, I'd settle for another Bill Clinton.