More On Obama’s Cairo Speech

My National Post column for the weekend adds more to the discussion of the president’s Cairo speech:

June 4 must have some special place in the Barack Obama political calendar.

On June 4, 2009, the President delivered his much anticipated speech to the Muslim world.

Exactly a year previously, June 4, 2008, Obama spoke to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). That speech too was much anticipated. Mr. Obama had just recently clinched the Democratic nomination. Many in the AIPAC audience were worried about this new candidate with the exotic name, a worry Obama jokingly acknowledged: “Let me know if you see this guy named Barack Obama, because he sounds pretty frightening.”

Candidate Obama set out to reassure. One promise in particular drew enthusiastic applause: “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” 

The next day, however, an Obama staffer told the press that Obama had not meant what the AIPAC attendees thought they had heard. Obama had only promised that Israel could retain a capital in Jerusalem, just as it had before 1967, and that the city would not be “divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967.” That promise did not exclude the possibility that Palestinians too might have a capital in Jerusalem or rule over other portions of the city.

Critics mock Obama for so often speaking from a teleprompter. Obama does so because he parses his words so very exactly. It is never wise to listen to an Obama speech without the text in hand.