It would seem as though Merkel would rather Obama left the partisan politics at home.

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled unease over the prospect of a possible speech by Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate, a spokesman said Wednesday.

Merkel has “only limited understanding for using the Brandenburg Gate as an election campaign backdrop, as it were, and has expressed skepticism about pursuing such plans,” Thomas Steg, a spokesman for the chancellor, told reporters. . . .

Steg noted that the Brandenburg Gate has become “a place with a particular exclusivity, intensity and symbolism” in view of past speeches by sitting U.S. presidents and events such as a large rally in solidarity with the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As a result, he said Merkel has voiced “great skepticism as to whether it is appropriate to bring an election campaign being fought not in Germany but in the United States to the Brandenburg Gate.”

Steg said that “no German (chancellor) candidate would think of using (Washington’s) National Mall or Red Square in Moscow for rallies, because it would be considered inappropriate.”

I think he’s right.  After all, why is Obama running an event for an American election in Germany?  Germans can’t vote for Obama.  If elected, Obama is supposed to represent Americans.  Not Germans.

I know the liberals are big on all this international government stuff and “global tests” for American policy, but it takes a special kind of chutzpah to actually go to another country and campaign.

It’s inappropriate, and yet another illustration of Obama’s inexperience and naivete.