http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07EED9123DF934A15754C0A96E9C8B63&scp=1&sq=marc%20charney%20obama%20berlin&st=cse
Conspicuously absent from Marc D. Charney's list of "echoes" in Barack Obama's Berlin speech is any reference to John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech delivered there. Obama did, however, allude to Kennedy when at the end of his speech he described the "aspirations shared by all people ... [to] live free from fear and free from want," claiming "It is because of these aspirations that all free people--everywhere--became citizens of Berlin."
Who made them citizens of Berlin? It was Kennedy, who said--as an introduction to his famous closing line--that "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin."
Wisely perhaps, Obama chose to allude to the less-famous intro to the statement "Ich bin ein Berliner" rather than risk seeming presumptuous by quoting Kennedy's use of the German. In doing so, Obama successfully updated Kennedy's notion for our times. The kind of sentiment expressed here is fully consistent with Obama's particular political genius--his inclusiveness--and helps to explain why the junior senator from Illinois was able to draw a crowd of 200,000 in a foreign city.
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