Comments about ‘Prevent international gift gaffes: Lessons learned from President Obama's 'giftgate'’

Here the most powerful man in the world and his secretary of state, who both have all of the possible resources available to them and they make mistakes like this, it must be laughable to the gifts recepients and it makes our country look bad. Perhaps neither of these two have the common sense that it takes to do their jobs, it makes one wonder what other more serious mistakes they have made for us.

It was no mistake. Our country, under Obama,is going in a different - progressive direction. Just give others the gift that keeps on giving...Obama.
And give them back the bust of Churchill. We don't want it.

The reason the bust of Churchill should not have been given back is that we are not children, and pettiness and personal feelings should have no place on the international stage. This was another great article, and I thank you for the thought provoking words. Mr Obama, however, should probably take a course from Miss Manners.

As this is a business column, not really a political column, I only wrote about a single well-known event and the business lessons we could learn from it. However, if this had been a more exhaustive story on presidential gift giving, it would have been good to mention the gift exchanges of other presidents and note that President Obama learned his lesson before subsequent gift exchanges.
Katie Connolly's article titled "No, Really, You Shouldn't Have" on Newsweek's website notes the reason President Obama was caught unprepared early in his presidency, "Apparently it was a rookie mistake. According to a person close to the situation, Obama hasn't yet appointed a chief of protocol and his staffers, still unpacking, didn't realize that the State Department has an entire office dedicated to foreign visits."
Connolly then tells us that President Obama gave a very classy gift to Australia's Prime Minister during his visit days later, and she gives examples of other very successful gift exchanges involving Presidents Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton and Bush.