Obama: No Need to Emulate Kennedy or Reagan

Obama mulling major speech in front of Berlin's Brandenburg gate; to evoke, Reagan, Kennedy. "Ich bin ein Obama"

WASHINGTON--A German friend passed along the news Saturday that local sources in Berlin are confirming that the Obama campaign was in contact with city authorities to discuss the possibility of presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) delivering an outdoor address in front of the Brandenburg gate. The thinking is Obama would follow in the footsteps of two very famous Cold War-era speeches of U.S. presidents speaking in Germany: JFK "Ich bin ein Berliner" and Reagan "tear down this wall."

From: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/07/obama_germany.html

A very bad and transparently vulgar idea, in this writer's (Fredrick Bernanke) opinion.

When Kennedy and Reagan made their speeches, the Brandenburg gate was arguably the epicenter of the Cold War. It represented the oppression and lack of human freedom practiced by the USSR. Today it doesn't.

If anything, it would give Republicans the opportunity to emphatically point out that it was the aggressive foreign policy of Reagan toward the USSR that indeed brought "down this wall."

If O thinks it necessary to deliver a major foreign policy speech on foreign soil--and I see no need for that during the campaign--other more appropriate venues should be evaluated. Such as? Paris, Prague, Warsaw, Vienna...I don't know his agenda.

O should chart his own course, not follow in the footsteps of others.