Revolt of the teleprompter: Obama thanks Obama for coming

"Smart diplomacy" in action. Another embarrassing gaffe for President Teleprompter. In an appearance with Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen, the order of their speeches got out of sync. Cowen realized the speech he was giving sounded very familiar and promptly stopped when he realized that it was the exact speech that Obama had just given.

A laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium to take over but it seems the script had finally been switched and the US president ended up thanking himself for inviting everyone to the party.

In fairness to Obama, this is probably a teleprompter he inherited from the prior administration so the origins of this error did not occur on his watch.

While this is really small potatoes in the realm of diplomacy, it does follow notably stiffing the Brits, snubbing Brazil and botching a lame "re-set" button joke with the Russians by failing to simply check the translation of ONE word and much more seriously, throwing the Czechs and Poles under the bus. But I guess this "smart" diplomacy beats a "dumb cowboy" every time.