The Berlin Sun Melts The Insufferable Airhorn

President John F. Kennedy spoke to the frightened people of West Berlin on June 26, 1963.  The crowd of 450,000 heard his pledge of solidarity when he uttered the iconic phrase, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

On July 29, 2008, candidate Obama spoke to an estimated 200,000 Germans.  On June 19, 2013, an estimated 4,500 (one one-hundredth the size of Kennedy’s) witnessed The Insufferable Airhorn being hampered by teleprompters that were on the fritz and a baking Berlin sun.

Average highs are normally in the 70s in Germany's capital city in June, but they were in the 90s as Obama delivered his speech.

MSNBC host and charter member of the Unicorn Tribe blamed the evil yellow eye in the sky for ruining his speech.

“I think a lot of the problem he had today was the late afternoon sun in Berlin ruined his use of the teleprompter and so his usual dramatic windup was ruined,” Matthews said immediately after the speech. “I think he was really struggling with the text there.” 

“Speaking behind a glass bulletproof shield, Obama appeared to be using the text of the speech rather than reading off of Teleprompters.”

Chuck Todd, groupthink press poodle and another member of the Unicorn Tribe, grasped at straws to explain why the sweat-drenched, bumbling errand boy sent by grocery clerks gave such a poor performance to such a small crowd.

“…you had that very distracting glass and you could just see that the President himself wasn't feeding off of the crowd. And I think look, part of it, it was hot. Those folks were out there for two and a half hours...it can sap your energy a little bit. And I just wonder if that added a little bit to this.”

Tomorrow all the folks at MSNBC, CNN, ABC and NBC will squeal and squawk that the Insufferable Airhorn’s snowflake specialness was clearly absent in Berlin but the Germans, like the snail, have finally made it onto the ark.

Ralf Fücks, head of the board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, diagnosed today this way:  “Germans have undergone a brutal sobering up with regard to Mr. Obama.  It is as overdone as the euphoria of 2008, but also a bit alarming.”

I've watched Berlin speeches by 4 Presidents: JFK,Reagan,Clinton,Obama. JFK & Reagan win hands down.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) June 20, 2013

Barry Does Berlin

The Insufferable Airhorn wraps up his G8 Summit with a bilateral meeting with French President Francois Hollande today, boards Air Force One around 1:30PM Eastern and arrives in Berlin around 2:25PM.

On Wednesday he’ll get the opportunity he was denied as a presidential candidate in 2008 to give a speech at Berlin’s most famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate.

Germany’s Deutche Welle notes that, “when he came to the German capital five years ago, Barack Obama was given a regal reception. But as he heads back to Berlin for the first time as US president, he'll find that ‘Obamania’ is a thing of the past.”

Constanze Stelzenmueller, a transatlantic relations expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Berlin confesses that, "He's become somewhat demystified."

Germans who viewed him as the great hope of world politics in 2008 are markedly disappointed that his regime hasn’t changed U.S foreign and security policies.

Revelations about the scale of the U.S. National Security Agency’s Internet surveillance program Prism have caused great angst in Germany, where data privacy is seen as an important aspect of personal freedom—so much so that even Google Street View has raised hackles.

Past comparisons overshadow the Insufferable Airhorn’s Berlin visit.  Fifty years ago this month, John F. Kennedy wowed a large crowd with the morale-boosting words “Ich bin ein Berliner.” In 1987, President Reagan stood with the gate behind him and demanded that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall."

With his favorability tanking back home, the errand boy sent by grocery clerks is seeking to stroke his ego with his mostly symbolic visit to Berlin.  He’s hoping that he can show the sheeple that he is still liked abroad.