Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2009 8:42 pm Post subject: A lifelong love affair in 36 minutes |
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For some reason, this made me chuckle. That Special Relationship!
A lifelong love affair in 36 minutes
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Nobody ever doubted, of course, that Gordon Brown loves America. And yet prior to his appearance on Capitol Hill yesterday morning, you might have imagined that it was a cool, cerebral kind of love: a matter of holidays on Cape Cod spent reading thick presidential biographies or papers by Harvard economists. By the end of the prime minister's historic address to both houses of Congress, however, no one could have been in any doubt: Gordon Brown really loves America. Passionately, lustily, sweatily. And for 36 minutes at least, Congress seemed to love him back.
There are certain methods guaranteed to bring Washington's lawmakers to their feet in wild applause, and Brown deployed them all. There were the heapings of praise for the idea of America, for American ingenuity, and for the American military, shout-outs to Reagan and Roosevelt, a smattering of God - and the obligatory glowing reference to Senator Edward Kennedy. It is a legal requirement that every major speech at the Capitol must involve a glowing reference to Kennedy, but Brown, in bestowing an honorary knighthood on behalf of the Queen, went further, thereby raising the bar. Pity the next world leader addressing Congress: they'll be forced to appoint the Massachusetts senator as honorary monarch.
The precedent that hung over Brown's speech, naturally, was Tony Blair's in 2003, on the subject of Iraq, which earned the then prime minister 19 standing ovations. Brown didn't beat that record. But Blair's address - "history will forgive us" - was a dubious exercise in group therapy: the cheers smacked of pathetic gratitude, as he piously pardoned the legislators, as well as himself, for the catastrophe of Iraq. Brown certainly indulged in abject flattery. But it felt honest, and it worked, to the extent that by the time he switched gears - calling for a real international agreement on climate change and a recognition that tackling global poverty is a moral obligation - he appeared to have ingrained some kind of Pavlovian reaction: Congress kept on leaping to its feet as internationalist left-leaning notion after internationalist left-leaning notion tumbled from the podium.
It wasn't entirely clear how far beyond the building the mutual adoration really extended. CNN even cut away from the speech halfway through, for commercials - operating, presumably, on the premise that economic recovery might be better served by the uninterrupted broadcast of advertisements for erectile dysfunction medication.
American commentators have spent much of the week observing with amusement the British obsession with the state of the "special relationship". But Brown abandoned all caution on the matter. "There is no power on earth than can drive us apart," he said of the transatlantic friendship. The link between America and Britain was, he said, "in times of trial, true; in the face of fear, faithful; and amidst the storms of change, constant". Should he ever need alternative employment - and, after all, he might - Brown might consider a career writing poems in overwrought Hallmark greetings cards. Or maybe there's another job he dreams of.
By the end Brown's passion, and Congress's cheers, had reached such levels that he seemed to have to stop himself from saying "... and God bless the United States of America." When Obama's two terms are over, might he be interested in the nomination? Yes, there's the constitutional prohibition on foreigners becoming president. But surely that could be sorted out. After all, it might be him or Sarah Palin.
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