At the UN, Going Where No U.S. President Has Gone Before...

By Claudia Rosett 12:35 PM on September 20, 2009

President Obama plans to chair a meeting of the UN Security Council this Thursday in New York. The Obama administration has been at pains to point out that this is historic — something that in the 65-year history no American President has ever done.

Unfortunately, there are good reasons why American presidents have not done this, and there are plenty of reasons why Obama should not do it now. It is both demeaning to the U.S. presidency, and dangerous to America. Obama was elected to represent and protect the interests of the United States, not to bargain away U.S. interests for a chance to personally bang the gavel at the crooked councils of the UN.

As promised in my post yesterday on Obama’s Extremely Historic Plans for the UN, here’s a link to my article today in the Philadelphia Inquirer on “A bad idea for a photo op,” explaining why Obama ought to leave the security-council chairing to his ambassador, Susan Rice.

For media inquiries, please contact [email protected] Claudia Rosett is widely recognized as a ground-breaking reporter on corruption at the United Nations. Her investigative reporting skills, drawn from three decades as a journalist covering international affairs, led her to expose the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, the worst financial fraud in the history of humanitarian relief. Ms. Rosett worked from 1984-2002 as a staff editorialist, editor and reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and has appeared before six U.S. House and Senate Committees and Subcommittees to testify on subjects including U.N.-related corruption and the Iran-North Korea strategic alliance. Her work on Oil-for-Food earned Claudia the 2005 Eric Breindel Award and the Mightier Pen award, and for her on-site coverage of China's Tiananmen Square in 1989, she won an Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence. She is a Foreign Policy Fellow with the Independent Women's Forum, and writes a column on foreign affairs for Forbes.com.

At the UN, Going Where No U.S. President Has Gone Before...

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