Ouch! — After promising to “push the reset button” on relations with Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planned to present Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with a light-hearted gift at their talks last Friday night to symbolize the Obama administration’s desire for a new beginning in the relationship. It didn’t quite work out as she planned and made her look like she can’t even find a two-way Russian dictionary to find a word a sixth grader in Russia would know.

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift—a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word “peregruzka” printed on top.  “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said, to Clinton’s clear surprise. Instead of “reset,” he said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”  Daily newspaper Kommersant put a prominent picture of the fake red button on its front page and declared: “Sergei Lavrov and Hillary Clinton pushed the wrong button.”  A correspondent for NTV television called it a “symbolic mistake,” pointing out that US-Russian ties had become overcharged in recent years due to discord over such issues as missile defence and last summer’s war in Georgia.

Perhap’s this is the beginning of Hillary’s “potatoe” moments, bringing back the memory of the word “potatoe”, which will be forever linked with the ex-Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle who became associated with this misspelling in a June 15, 1992 incident. Quayle went to a photo op at Munoz Rivera School in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was to officiate a spelling bee by drawing flash cards and asking students to write the words on the blackboard. Twelve-year-old William Figueroa wrote potato, but Quayle prompted him to append an “e” which, according to Quayle’s 1995 autobiography Standing Firm, was the spelling given to him on the flash card.^[1]

Read what others are saying

For someone who said we will repair our relations overseas, the President has certainly turned our closest ally against us by his actions this week towards the U.K.      British newspapers covering Brown’s visit to Washington, D.C., reported Tuesday that the White House had snubbed Brown by canceling a live Rose Garden press conference and omitting state dinners and receptions that are traditional events for visiting foreign dignitaries.  Here is a sample of comments:

THE TELEGRAPH:  President Obama has been rudeness personified towards Britain this week. His handling of the visit of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to Washington was appalling. First Brown wasn’t granted a press conference with flags, then one was hastily arranged in the Oval office after the Brits had to beg. Obama looked like he would rather have been anywhere else than welcoming the British leader to his office and topped it all with his choice of present (*) for the PM. A box of 25 DVDS including ET, the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars? Oh, give me strength. We do have television and DVD stores on this side of the Atlantic. Even Gordon Brown will have seen those films too often already.

James Delinpole of the Telegraph wrote:  On US radio’s Garrison show today, I was asked for my reaction as a true born Englishman to President Obama’s double insult – first the sending back of the Winston Churchill bust, then his snub to Gordon Brown. “Tough one. Really tough one,” I said, torn – as most of surely are – between delight at seeing Brown roundly humiliated, and dismay at having the special relationship so peremptorily, cruelly and bafflingly ruptured.

THE GUARDIAN: During his visit to Washington, Gordon Brown wanted to give something special to Barack Obama to symbolise Britain’s special relationship with America. The PM presented Obama with a pen holder crafted of wood from the HMS Gannet, an anti-slave ship previously named the HMS President. The Gannet was a sister ship to HMS Resolute, whose timbers were used to construct the desk in the Oval Office. Obama’s gift to the PM? Eh, not so special. It was a collection of 25 classic American films, which you can find at Blockbuster or Netflix.

EVENING STANDARD:  Mrs Brown brought each of President Obama‘s daughters – Malia, 10, and seven-year-old Sasha – a Topshop dress and matching necklace as well as six children’s books by British authors during a private visit to the West Wing. In return she was given a toy model of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, for her sons Fraser and John. Similar models of Marine One in identical-looking boxes bearing the White House crest are sold on Amazon for $15 (£10.67).

THE INDEPENDENT:   The Independent, a British newspaper, headlined a story Tuesday, “Brown Faces Humiliation after Obama Snub.”