We are in trouble when China looks better than the US on civil rights

No Way to Make Friends

Bush could surely have arranged to meet in Baghdad with troops from allied countries who are also fighting and dying in Iraq

<snip>TRAVELING THROUGH East Asia last week, I noted how poorly most observers rated President Bush’s recent trip there. Even more striking, however, was the comparison repeatedly made between Bush’s visit and that of Chinese leader Hu Jintao—with a thumping majority believing Hu had done better.

In Thailand at the meeting for Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation, “there was no question that Hu was the better appreciated one,” a Thai official said to me. “He outshone Bush in most of the attendees’ eyes.” The trips ended with the two making back-to-back visits to Australia. Bush was greeted with demonstrations, his address to Parliament interrupted by hecklers. Hu, on the other hand, got a 20-minute standing ovation from Parliament. “It is Hu’s visit rather than George W. Bush’s that will provide a lingering sense of satisfaction and security about Australia’s place in the region,” wrote The Australian, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch and not given to knee-jerk anti-Americanism.

What is going on here? How does the chief representative of the world’s oldest constitutional democracy lose a popularity contest to the leader of a Leninist party?

Let’s start with the atmospherics. Everywhere Bush travels, his security is handled with the usual American overkill—thousands of guards and aides, walled-off compounds, tightly scripted movements from one bubble to another. Hu, by contrast, had a modest security detail, traveled freely and mingled with other leaders and even the general public. (Tony Blair sometimes manages to travel abroad with a total of six people.)

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