Thursday, October 01, 2009

Nile Gardiner: Barack Obama’s Top Five Embarrassing Speeches on the World Stage

THE TELEGRAPH: Last week’s débacle at the United Nations where Barack Obama delivered a speech so naïve that even Jimmy Carter would have blushed, has inspired this list of the five most embarrassing speeches by the president (so far) as a world leader. By embarrassing I mean embarrassing to the United States, speeches that have projected weakness rather than strength, policy statements that have forced millions of Americans to cringe in front of their television sets.

In compiling this list I have picked the five presidential addresses by President Obama that represent the antithesis of the kind of leadership that Ronald Reagan demonstrated in confronting the Soviet Empire and winning the Cold War. These are all speeches that show either staggering naïveté or have gone out of their way to apologize for American power or America’s past, humiliating the United States in the process. Here is my list, in descending order: >>> Nile Gardiner | Thursday, October 01, 2009