WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard couldn’t say enough about the close friendship between their two countries during Gillard’s first White House visit Monday. But on one issue there was no common ground: Vegemite.
Obama winced at the mere mention of the salty yeast paste, an Australian staple, when a student asked about it during a classroom visit the two leaders conducted. “It’s horrible!” the president declared.
Gillard displayed some diplomacy befitting a world leader on her first Washington tour, calling the issue “a little bit of a division between the president and I. I love Vegemite.”
Obama deals daily with weighty matters of war and peace and complex foreign relations. Sometimes, though, it’s not so complicated.
Few contentious issues divide the U.S. and Australia. So it was that after delivering some stock comments of mutual support in the Oval Office, Obama and Gillard took their quick road trip to Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., to mix it up with an 11th-grade history class and its questions about Vegemite.
