The Better Part of a Valorous Run for the Presidency

I'd like to ruminate a bit about Senator Obama's faux state visits abroad.

It would be doing him a disservice to paint his efforts as distasteful, tasteless or in poor taste. Preposterous, embarrassingly offensive, asinine and inexcusable are more to the fore.

It's reported that official Obama campaign posters have appeared everywhere—including the most holy Western Wall--, his 'Change We Can Believe In' banners have accompanied his visits, and a spokesperson for the German chancellor has gone so far as to say officially, 'It is unusual to hold election rallies abroad. No German candidate for high office would even think of using the National Mall or Red Square in Moscow for a rally because it would not be seen as appropriate.'

Discreet, fact-finding visits to Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Germany, and more would have been not only helpful to Senator Obama's application for the presidency, but would have indicated an individual who understood the powerful delicacy of the position he sought. Sadly, sentience and discretion would not seem to be players in the senator's vocabulary.

I have traveled the world and lived overseas many times and I find it personally discomfiting that a candidate for our presidency would campaign in countries other than the one he hopes to lead. Even my teenaged son compared it to a wannabe chancellor of Germany taking his or her campaign to New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles. Haven't we been mortified and shamed enough by our Bush years?

If this contretemps is any indication of what lies ahead, our public opprobrium may continue unabated.