Achtung Obama!

Conservative bloggers are up in arms about the new flyer for Obama's speech in Berlin, printed in German. "This is pretty extraordinary. A candidate for the American Presidency is using flyers printed in German to turn people out for his campaign rally in Berlin on Thursday.... I'm surprised at this lapse in judgment in an otherwise well-oiled and professional Obama campaign."

What does they expect him to use? Swedish? Ancient Mongol? Foreign diplomacy is so much harder when practised in a tongue alien to all the parties concerned, as President Bush demonstrated when he addressed the Italian Prime Minister in Spanish ("hey Amigo!") at the recent G8 conference. Maybe Bush has spoiled everybody. We've grown so accustomed to the panting mayhem that accompanies his every overseas trip that the idea of addressing a flyer to Germans, in German, strikes us as a reprehensible lapse.