Brown’s Telling Gift to Obama

Ted Bromund / March 05, 2009

Last month, President Obama returned a bronze bust of Winston Churchill that had, since 9/11, been on loan as a symbol of the Special Relationship from the British Government to the United States. When he arrived for his visit this week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown brought along a few replacements. If he studies them well, Obama could learn a useful lesson about diplomacy: it is a compliment to, not a replacement of, the use of force.

There was a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s authorized biography of Churchill, all seven volumes of it, so a bit of the Churchill touch endures in the White House on British insistence. There was a framed commissioning paper for HMS Resolute, rescued by an American whaler in 1856; part of HMS Resolute was later made into the desk presented by Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, and used by American presidents to this day.

And then there was the third present. As Reuters reports it, the gift was:

a pen holder fashioned from the timber of HMS Gannet, a sister ship of the Resolute that also served for a time on anti-slavery missions off Africa.

The ironies here are wonderful, though Obama doesn’t seem likely to appreciate them. (more…)