Obama's Berlin No Show
The president has reportedly declined to travel to Berlin for the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Commentary's blog carries an apt comment from Rick Richman.
[P]erhaps [Obama's] political advisers will consider the optics of his ending his first year in office with (1) a trip to Copenhagen on behalf of his hometown, (2) a trip to Oslo to pick up a prize he admits he does not deserve, and (3) a failure to take a trip to Berlin to help celebrate his country’s historic accomplishment.
On the plus side, November 9 is a good moment to begin planning for a Ronald Reagan memorial to be ready by the time of the 25th anniversary. My nomination for the location: the big empty traffic circle on the Virginia side of the Memorial Bridge, in line with both Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
It's now a perfectly blank piece of greensward, but visible to every commuter en route to the airport named after Reagan. Here's where America should memorialize the president who led the country to final victory in the Cold War - and maybe remember the wall that once symbolized the divide between freedom and unfreedom, and whose overthrow seems such a secondary concern to the current president.