MAJOR IDEOLOGICAL BULLETIN – OBAMA CLAIMS HE ISN'T ANTI-BRIT – AT 11:04 A.M. ET:  The headline from The Times of London says it all:  BARACK OBAMA:  I'M NOT ANTI-BRITISH.

Did you ever think we'd have an American president who'd find it necessary to say that?  What great advances we have seen in our foreign policy:

BARACK OBAMA yesterday told David Cameron that his aggressive stance towards BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster was not motivated by anti-British prejudice.

The US president, whose grandfather was allegedly tortured by the British in colonial Kenya, has pointedly referred to the oil giant as “British Petroleum”, although it changed its name nine years ago. British politicians claimed he was exploiting BP’s origins to deflect attention from his failure to manage the crisis.

After yesterday’s 30-minute telephone conversation, No 10 issued a carefully worded statement to defuse the growing transatlantic tensions. It stated: “President Obama said to the prime minister that BP was a multinational global company and that frustrations about the oil spill had nothing to do with national identity. The prime minister stressed the economic importance of BP to the UK, US and other countries. The president made it clear that he had no interest in undermining BP’s value.”

The softening of the row comes as BP prepares to offer new concessions to the US government, including a plan to set aside billions of dollars in a ring-fenced “clean-up fund”.

COMMENT:  You know, Mr. President, building up good will has its uses.  If you already had shown some good will toward our most important ally, these doubts about you wouldn't arise.  But you 1) gratuitiously returned to Britain a bust of Winston Churchill that had rested in the Oval Office, 2) treated the British prime minister with contempt, even giving him a cheap set of DVDs that don't play in British machines; 3) have shown a coldness toward Britain unprecedented in our time, and at least since the administration of FDR. 

So why should anyone be shocked that the Brits don't see a halo around Obama any longer?

June 13, 2010