Answered my own question - William Edgar Borah.
From http://www.kevincmurphy.com/williamborah5.html:
“As Germany began to annex neighboring nations, Borah grew more erratic and unreasonable in his assessment of European politics. He derided British visitors who came “to spread their propaganda” and attacked France and England for veiling their national interests in the language of democracy and dictatorship. Worse still, although Borah despised any dictatorial pretensions in Roosevelt, the Idahoan revealed his admiration for Hitler. “There are so many great sides to him,” Borah said of Hitler in 1938.42 After the Fuehrer had taken the Suedetenland, Borah emoted, “Gad, what a chance Hitler has! If he only moderates his religious and racial intolerance, he would take his place beside Charlemagne. He has taken Europe without firing a shot.” Even after the war had started in 1939, a war Borah had repeatedly stated in public would never happen and that he curiously labeled as “phony” after its inception, the Senator lamented, “Lord, if I could only have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.”
Pretty serious (and literate) slam by the President. No wonder it hurts so bad.
OK, I have a new nickname : Obama Borahma
I am telling you, the more I read about Borah, the more on target the President’s comment seems. From the same article:
“William Edgar Borah (1865-1940) of Idaho, considered by his contemporaries a first-class statesman and orator in the tradition of Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan, spent thirty-three tumultuous years as one of the most powerful and persuasive members of the United States Senate. From the time of his arrival in Washington in 1907 until his death of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1940, Borah was well known and highly regarded both in the capital and across the nation for the force and quantity of his rhetoric. In 1936, Time Magazine declared him “the most famed Senator of this century” and “the great Moral force of the Senate, the one member who could arise and deal with Right and Wrong in an electric way.”1 Esteemed around the world as “the Lion of Idaho” and “the Great Opposer,” he played a pivotal role through five Presidential administrations in shaping the domestic and foreign agendas of early twentieth-century American public policy.”
And just what party did he belong to?