Will Obama Rate a Second Term?

Take a bow, Barry!

Holy Cow! He's hardly been in office two months, isn't it a little bit early to rain on his reelection parade? Well, maybe, but I was catching up on some of Rich Galen's columns over at Mullings, when I ran across this from a few weeks ago:

When British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited American President Barack Obama last week there were several things which were seen, by diplomats, as slights - but real people wouldn't have noticed.

There was no opening press conference in front of the massed flags of the two countries. And WH press secretary Robert Gibbs talked about the "special partnership" between the US and the UK which is not the same, in diplomat-speak, as the previous construct which was "special relationship."

But that wasn't the big one. The big one was the exchange of gifts. According to the New York Daily News:

After Brown presented Obama with a pen holder crafted from the timbers of the 19th century British warship HMS President (whose sister ship, HMS Resolute, provided the wood for the Oval Office's desk), Obama offered up ... 25 DVDs of American movie classics.

How is this tied into Hillary? Well, as it happens the officials responsible for deciding who gets what from the President are the folks in the Gift Division of the Office of Protocol which is in the State Department which is run by … Hillary Clinton.

The Brits are understandably miffed by the notion that the people at the highest levels of the US government gave some staffer the State Department VISA card with instructions to go the Borders at 18th and L and find something for about 100 US Dollars, not British Pounds.

Brown had thought about this visit and presented a one-of-a-kind gift. Clinton's people … didn't.

Remember that during the campaign Hillary claimed she knew a lot about this stuff because she had travelled around the world a good bit either by herself as First Lady, or as chaperone-in-chief to keep an eye on old Bill while he was on a road trip (if you know what I mean and I think you do).

It turns out that Hillary Clinton has reached her level of incompetence as Secretary of State.

And then today, the story of Obama bowing to the Saudi king. Also a matter of protocol. Which presumably came to him from...the State Department. Which got me to thinking, "What if it were not incompetence, but calculation on Hillary's part? How Clintonian would it be for Hillary to make Obama look like an incompetent rube in order to clear the deck for her to make another run at the Presidency in 2012?
Just a thought!

Cross posted at Say Anything