Gift exchange

The Daily Mail reported on the Brown/Obama meeting. I admit that I'm not always good at figuring out what someone would like as a gift, but I'd have figured that when heads of state are involved you go ask one of the protocol experts over at the State Department. It isn't rocket science: there's a guy whose job is to answer that question, ask him.

There seem to be three possibilities: Obama couldn't be bothered to ask, somebody at State was about to retire and decided to cause trouble, or Obama wanted to snub Brown.

I try to keep to my old rule about "Don't attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity." It is getting hard, though--I'd have thought that after declining to meet with him (and blaming it on snow??) at the start he'd have realized there shouldn't be any more mistakes.

Update: As usual Mark Steyn describes things lucidly.