Dowd: The Buck House Stops Here [View All]

President Bush thought he had at last found someplace even more sequestered from the real world than the Republican fund-raisers and conservative think tanks where he makes his carefully controlled "public" appearances.

Swaddled in the $8.5 million security blanket of reinforced concrete, wire mesh and 14,000 bobbies designed to protect him from the ungrateful citizens of our one — I mean, our closest — ally, Mr. Bush was a blithe spirit in his rented tails with his English cousins behind the high gates of Buckingham Palace.

(snip)

The White House packaged the visit for the viewers at home.

How else to explain the same Bush advance geniuses who brought us the "Mission Accomplished" banner putting up a blue PowerPoint-ish backdrop for the president's speech at Whitehall Palace that stuttered, "United Kingdom," "United Kingdom," "United Kingdom."

The people in the United Kingdom already knew he was in the United Kingdom. And the kingdom isn't very united at the moment.

Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, captured the spirit of the moment when he told NPR that the Republican National Committee should foot the bill for Mr. Bush's extraordinary security, the largest police operation ever in Great Britain. All this, he harrumphed, "just so George Bush can use a few clips of him and the queen in his campaign advertisements for re-election next year."

There was a dispiriting contrast between G.W.B. shutting out the world and avoiding the British public, and the black-and-white clips this week of J.F.K. reaching out to the world and being adored by Berliners.

more…
http://nytimes.com/2003/11/20/opinion/20DOWD.html