Andrew remarks on Obama’s “Polish death camp” error:
I have to say the explosive reaction to the terminology – despite the fact that Obama was honoring an anti-Nazi Pole – blindsided me. No doubt there will be a formal apology. But ginning this up into some kind of campaign attack seems silly to me. Which means Romney will probably try to exploit it.
Obama’s phrase was incredibly sloppy. It’s surprising that a politician from Chicago wouldn’t already know not to say something like this. After all, the Chicago metro area has the largest Polish population outside Poland. As provocative as the phrase was, it doesn’t say anything about U.S. policy in the region or U.S.-Polish relations in general. It was an unfortunate and entirely avoidable blunder on Obama’s part, and he’ll have to suffer some deserved embarrassment for it.
I suspect it will be shoehorned into the exceedingly dishonest Romney/GOP narrative that Obama has repeatedly betrayed and snubbed allies for the last three years. Unfortunately for Obama, this blunder is real and it actually did offend an allied government. Unlike the usual litany of insults and snubs that Republicans attribute to Obama, this one happened and it was taken as an insult, albeit an unintentional one. On the other hand, Obama has been falsely attacked over these supposed snubs and betrayals so many times that another attack may have no effect at all.
Update: On cue, Marc Thiessen repeats some Nile Gardiner nonsense about U.S.-Polish relations.
Second Update: Daniel Knowles’ reaction to this mini-controversy is worth reading:
The idea that Mr Obama should apologise to Donald Tusk is ludicrously over the top. This was a gaffe, at an event at the White House intended to honour a Polish resistance fighter. Even if common sense didn’t, the context would have made it clear what the President was referring to. If it wasn’t for Mr Sikorski, very few people would even have noticed.
And this constant policing of politicians’ every utterance by grievance-obsessed special interests is exactly what makes British politics so boring. I really hope that American politics won’t follow.
Too late!
German_reader 
daniel_larison 
It is indeed incomprehensible that any politician coming out of Chicago, the second biggest Polish city on earth, could be be unaware of the sensitivities involved here. The Polish MFA for years has waged a (mostly successful) campaign in the Western media to cease reference to “Polish death camps.” This merely feeds into the (unstated) belief that Obama & Co really do not care a whit about the sensitivities of Americans of European background. Obama will pay a price in November for so casually insulting Polish-Americans, who are a classic “Reagan Democrat” constituency that went for Obama in a big way in 2008 but will not again. When Obama loses Ohio and Pennsylvania in November, this will be a factor. Again, the White House is paying the price for unimaginably lazy staff work. As usual, the tossed-off non-apology neither worked nor helped.
Of course the neocon cheering section is all over this, but so what? On this one they have an issue that’s symbolic yet real. Poland has not been “let down” by the USG over missile defense, et al, but the Poles certainly do feel ill-used by the US and NATO over issues like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Poles punched way above their weight for no tangible benefits.
As for Daniel Knowles, he appears to be about 12 years old and, if he’s not clear on why this is deeply offensive to Poles – it’s not a partisan issue in Poland, and it’s impossible to say Tusk is some sort of rabble-rouser; au contraire – then he needs to acquaint himself with the fact that WWII led directly to the murder of 6 million Polish citizens, one-fifth of the population. That would be like 12 million Brits getting killed today by a murderous occupying regime (in Poland’s case, two of them); that would create a lasting impression.