It was supposed to be so grand. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama -- who next Thursday in Berlin punctuates the midpoint of his European and Mid-Eastern foreign policy tour with a major speech on trans-Atlantic relations -- ran into a few snags on his choice of venue. His initial desire to speak in front of the historically resonant Brandenburg Gate (a scandal with 'gate' already built in!) has been quietly dropped after it sparked a three-way conflict last week between German Chancellor Merkel (against), Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (for) and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit (very for).

Though insiders say Obama may still walk through the historical gate where past Presidents Reagan exhorted Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" and Kennedy proclaimed himself a Berliner, the gate itself is now off the agenda with Obama officials now looking at alternatives like Gendarmenmarkt and Tempelhof Airport.

Not that Obama doesn't have a key phrase of his own to launch on the occasion: he will say, "Ich kann zuhören" ("I can listen") Dialog International blogger and Obama campaigner David Vickrey writes at the Atlantic Review. As a mission statement for US-EU relations, its harder to imagine a starker contrast to the "don't tell me anything" policy favoured by President Bush over his eight years in office.

It's a shift in American political culture and largely a good thing, writes Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post, that both candidates are now campaigning overseas (McCain just got back from Mexico and Columbia). "It's also useful for American voters to spend some time thinking about how their president will be perceived abroad because that's where he's going to be spending a lot of his time, like it or not. If Obama or McCain is going to be preoccupied with foreigners, perhaps it's not a bad idea for both to prove that they can cope." Nor, for that matter, is it bad for 'foreigners' who'll have to cope with Obama or McCain.