The Chosen Obama Narrative
Gosh, I Love The Liberal Media
China's Gold Medals Found To Have High Lead Content
The Party of Unity For One America
How Obama Changed Change
Women At Center Stage
Obama Is He Ready to be President
And If Obama Loses?
Martha's Big Adventure - Happy Labor Day
This Historic Candidacy
Crying Wolf On The Economy While Ignoring Real Perils
Kvetching and Convening
Major Media Decide -- Vote Obama
Obama Still Stumbling In Polls
The Senator
Convention(al) Reflections
Farewell To An American Hero
Economy of Words
Farewell, Nato
Findings
Hillary Can't Fix What Her Party Broke
Let's Get Cracking On America's Infrastructure
Mccains Vs. Biden: Not All 'Foreign Policy Experience' Is Created Equal
The Obama Moment
Kennedy's 'Right' Is Wrong
Rolling With The Punches
State of Denial
Obama Camp Claims Its 'Ground Game' Will Beat Bush's of '04
The Perfect Stranger
For Voters, It's A Matter of Trust
Michelle Obama: Family-Values Feminist -- Or Phony?
Game Show Politics
Biden Selection May Help Mccain Make Obama The Issue
Barack
The Quadrennial Whine Is Wrong
The Better Hillary Does, The Worse For Obama
'RomneyCare' Should Keep Mitt Off McCain Ticket
Be Not Cool
Report From A Forgotten War (4th in a Series)
Avoiding A Lieberman Disaster
Quality of Leadership Counts
Art Or Pornography? A Fine Line Indeed
On Shooting Taggers: Why Conservatives And Liberals Differ
New Day, New World, New Democratic Party
Grateful For A Do-Nothing Congress
A Gathering of Clowns Acrobats and Con Men
Win Or Lose, Obama Pioneers Interactive Convention
Obama Nomination Reframes Racial Issues
Democrats Talkin' Like The GOP
McCain Can Win Only As A War President
Young Feminists Shed Label
The Real "Big Tent" Party
Bill Clinton Mending Fences
Michelle Bernard Looks for the Right McCain -- Interview
Losing Faith Voters
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
We've Come A Long Way, Baby
The Devils In His Details
The Clintons' Exit



Spectacle In Berlin
Suzanne Fields 7/18/2008
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Barack Obama is a man in a hurry. He had barely quieted the criticism of his using the presidential seal with his name on it as a prop for his speeches before he suggested that he wanted to follow Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton to Berlin to make a speech at the Brandenburg Gate. He got a lot of public reminders that Reagan and Clinton waited until they were sworn in to use the famous gate as backdrop.

The history and reflected glory of the Brandenburg Gate has trapped ambitious men before. What was built as an elaborate toll gate to collect from everyone entering and leaving the city quickly became a symbol of national honor. Napoleon marched under it when he entered Berlin in triumph in 1806. He seized the bronze goddess of peace and her chariot, pulled by four horses, from her place atop the gate and took it home to Paris as booty of war. France returned it eight years later, and the Germans gave her a new identity, calling her Victoria, goddess of victory.

When Paris fell to the Nazis in the summer of 1940, the Wehrmacht troops marched through the Brandenburg Gate swathed in swastikas. After Berlin was divided between East and West following the war, the bronze fell into neglect and disrepair, to be restored to monumental glory only when Germany was unified.

Barack
Obama wants to bask in a little of that reflected glory, perhaps to ride in his imagination on one of the horses of the goddess of victory. Stung by critics, he dispatched his men to scout for other sites. There are lots to choose from. The restored Reichstag, with its gorgeous glass dome, would make a splendid photo-op, marking the return of democracy to Germany. The new United States Embassy on Pariser Platz is a symbol of renewed U.S.-German relations — but George Bush the elder got there first, cutting a red ribbon to open the embassy on the Fourth of July. He also should be wary of the embassy because it resembles a vast bunker with its security requirements, and Berlin has given bunkers a bad name.

Obama could take a short walk from the embassy to pose at "Germania," an exhibition of models of the buildings Albert Speer, Hitler's architect, planned as a grand city to celebrate Nazi triumph after World War II. The Volkshalle, or people's hall, was modeled on Hadrian's Pantheon in Rome, intended as a world capital "comparable only to Egypt, Babylon or Rome." The hall would have been so large that the breath of the spectators would have become moisture to fall as an indoor rain. Sen. Obama could reflect there on how the hot air of big talk sometimes comes to naught.

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Obama, Brandenburg Gate
By Rainer Hachfeld - Neues Deutschland, Germany * Posted 07/10/2008
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