Huckabee foot in mouth

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told a New York radio station on Monday that Mr Obama's youth led him to resent the West, which he said explains why Mr Obama's foreign policy differs so greatly from that of his predecessors.

"One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, (is) very different than the average American," Mr Huckabee said, pointing to Mr Obama's decision in 2009 to return a bust of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

He failed to note that the bust was on loan from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who offered it to President George W. Bush in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as a symbol of trans-Atlantic solidarity. Mr Huckabee also did not mention that Mr Obama replaced the Oval Office fixture with a bust of one of his American heroes, President Abraham Lincoln.

"The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British," Mr Huckabee said. "But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather. He probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather."

Mr Obama's grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, was detained in a 1952 uprising against British colonial rule in Kenya. Mr Huckabee said childhood stories of the Mau Mau rebellion would lead President Obama to want to return the bust of Churchill, who ordered a crackdown against that uprising.