Sounds like the Obama campaign will use the Plaza but shift the podium a bit.

“Christoph Heusen, the Chancellor’s foreign policy spokesman, was approached by an adviser from the Bush team and ticked off about Obama’s plans,” the paper wrote. Ms Merkel’s government refused to comment on the allegations yesterday, but opposition politicians went on the offensive. Klaus Wowereit, Berlin’s governing Social Democrat mayor, who favours an Obama speech at the gate, warned: “Ms Merkel must be careful not to let herself be used as a pawn. It might be that she received directions from President Bush in Japan.”

Jürgen Trittin, the deputy leader of the Green party, accused Ms Merkel of “acting in the interests of President Bush and John McCain, who wants to continue Bush’s foreign policy”.

The possible Obama Brandenburg Gate speech has split the coalition German government. Frank Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrat Foreign Minister, along with some renegade conservative and liberal politicians, backed the speech. “The Americans contributed decisively to saving the city of Berlin: that is why we should make historic sites like the Brandenburg Gate available to them,” Steinmeier said.

Seems the original objection was from the German Chancellor who objected to the visit being used for a political photo op rather than a visit to a foreign country for the purpose of getting information. If this is a fact finding mission it is off to a rocky start.

My understanding was that the Bush Administration was the first to raise the “issue” with Merkel. It was very much an “unusual” back-channel complaint to a foreign leader interfering with the time and place of a Presidential candidates public speeches.

While it’s true that Obama had nothing to do with the falling of the Berlin Wall…it is a testament to “people power” pushing governments to do the things their leaders won’t. That is a “theme” of Obama’s campaign (whether or not he actually is holding to it).

The McCain Campaign has a lot of “backdrops” that are pretty difficult to evade, though…”the hug”, the Birthday Cake on the runway while Katrina ravaged New Orleans, etc.

These has beens’ are trying to revive something that past twenty/thirty years ago for them – any sense of reality. All they can hope to do is inspire the repub base who collectively seem to have the IQ of a Nectarine with things THEY would have like to have done but were too stupid to make it happen.

Hopefully, Krauthammer will just fade away like a smelly old pair of socks.

Love the title of this, “Irony Runneth Over.” Yeah, this next to George Bush’s BLINDING CHUTZPAH??? GWB doesn’t even deserve to speak in front of the proposed Sewage Plant to sport his name.

It’s kind of heartwarming to see Krauthammer unpack his sense of irony from the mothballs, where it’s obviously been for the past eight years.

I’d love to see the size of the line item in the White House travel budget for “backdrops, Presidential, making and deployment of”. Or would that come out of the WH Press Office budget?

Klaus Wowereit (mayor of Berlin) would like to have Obama make that speech. He doesn’t see this as bias, and told he would welcome John McCain as well, if he wanted to make a speech.

Some wallow in the past.
Some want to make a future.