Obama in Berlin: ‘Florid preaching, flame set at simmer’

“Florid preaching, flame set at simmer”: Indianapolis Star op-ed columnist Dan Carpenter offers a smart assessment of Barack Obama’s recent Berlin speech. “It wasn’t a lecture and wasn’t a manifesto, thank heaven,” wrote Carpenter. “Specificity and negativity would have been out of place for a guest without diplomatic portfolio. Florid preaching with the flame set at simmer was what the occasion called for, and what worked, whether or not one feels the address reached the standard of John F. Kennedy’s Ich bin ein Berliner! (Best headline pun about Obama’s speech: “The Best and Wurst of Times,” from the National Review Online.)