President Obama's European Trip Could Pay Benefits Abroad, At Home

[steve2470]

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-european-trip-g8-summit-buckingham-palace/story?id=13643596

Fresh from his focus on the Mideast, President Obama launches a week-long trip to Europe Sunday that's intended to strengthen his hand on both sides of the Atlantic.

A state visit at Buckingham Palace and a G-8 summit in France will be sandwiched between Obama's first forays to Ireland and Poland, ancestral homelands for millions of American voters.

Obama will trace his own roots in Ireland, where his great-great-great grandfather was born in 1830. Then Obama will turn to relations with European allies and particularly Poland, a key central European nation that has felt slighted for years.

For all the pomp and circumstance, however, the president cannot expect to return with many concrete achievements. The problems he will confront, from Europe's debt crises to the Middle East's violent protests, offer no quick solutions. "These are questions to which there are not good answers," says Charles Kupchan, former director for European affairs at the White House National Security Council. "Obama will not come home from Europe having solved any of these problems."

[msongs]

1. he can tell the EU it is now responsible for all of its own military & defense costs nt

[madmom]

2. We all know this is just another vacation at taxpayer expense...and

just in case....:sarcasm:

[Tarheel_Dem]

3. They're beside themselves in his ancestral village. This will be good...

for the president and for the village.