President Obama set the record straight on Winston Churchill bust in Whitehouse
President Obama wrote an op-ed article in The Daily Telegraph, in effect urging the British people to vote to stay a member of the European Union. The Conservative mayor of London did not take kindly to the President meddling in British politics. London’s Mayor Boris Johnson lashed out with the Right Wing story of Obama’s removal of Winston Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office.
Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009. Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why. It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington. No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision. Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender. Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date.
President Obama responded most appropriately. He made both the mayor and the Right Wing in America seem petty and silly
“Let me start with Winston Churchill,” President Obama said. “I don’t know if people are aware of this but in the residence on the second floor, my office, my private office, is called the Treaty Room. Right outside the door of the Treaty Room, so that I see it every day, including on weekends when I am going into that office to watch the basketball game, the primary image I see is a bust of Winston Churchill. It’s there voluntarily because I can do anything on the second floor. I love Winston Churchill. I love the guy. Now when I was elected as President of the United States, my predecessor had kept a Churchill bust in the Oval Office. There are only so many tables where you can put busts. Otherwise, it starts looking a little cluttered. And I thought it was appropriate and I suspect most people here in the United Kingdom might agree that as the first African American President it might be appropriate to have the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King in my office to remind me of all the hard work of a lot of people who’s somehow allowed me the privilege of holding this office. That’s just on Winston Churchill. I think people should know that.”
One might ask why the president is just now addressing this smear after 7 years in office. It is simple. He felt no need to do it in America with an off the rail Right Wing that would never like him. He, however, is well liked in Europe and the UK. The mayor of London was attempting to destroy his likeability in an attempt to sabotage the taking of his advice to the British people to stay in the European Union.