WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush is his own secret weapon. Whenever he travels, he exceeds expectations and disarms at least some of the opposition his policies and his reputation provoke while he remains in Washington.
His state visit to Britain, while no triumph, went a very great deal better than we had all been led to expect from the dire warnings of massed and angry demonstrations. His policy speech at the Whitehall Banqueting Room, the spot from which King Charles I was led to his execution in January 1649, was respectfully received.
The left-liberal Guardian's editorial judged his recasting of his core belief that the war on terrorism and the campaign to bring democracy to the Middle East should become the organizing principle of the civilized world to be "palatable, even attractive." The Independent, usually highly critical of Bush, the neo-conservative zealots presumed to surround him and of his war on Iraq, concluded that his remarks were "delivered with a degree of verve, eloquence and even humor that defied his reputation as the least articulate American president since the silent Calvin Coolidge."
The angry crowds did not materialize, though there were close to 100,000 dignified British demonstrators recording their opposition to his presence and the cause for which he unapologetically stood. And they seemed to recognize that one result of the fall of Saddam Hussein was that Iraqis too might now benefit from a similar freedom to express their political feelings.
British opinion, as recorded in last week's Guardian/ICM poll, was strikingly different from the gloomy forebodings of an end to the special relationship between Britain and the Americans that has lasted since 1941, toppling Nazism, Japanese militarism and Communism along the way, along with the wretched and unlamented regime of Saddam.
The poll found British opinion to be strongly pro-American, with 62 percent of voters believing that the United States is "generally speaking a force for good, not evil, in the world" and only 15 percent agreeing that America is the "evil empire." Two-thirds of Prime Minister Tony Blair's voters said British and American troops should not withdraw from Iraq now but remain until the country is "more stable."
This is not the only time that Bush's foreign travels have had a similar calming effect. His first appearance before the assembled leaders of the European Union, at their Gothenburg summit in Sweden in the summer of 2001, was expected to be a stormy confrontation.
Bush had ditched the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, made it clear he rejected the International Criminal Court, and provoked the first outraged accusation of "the toxic Texan" bullying his way around the globe. Gothenburg erupted in angry protests and the Swedish police, unaccustomed to riot control, handled matters clumsily. But inside the summit, the EU leaders found themselves reassured and even mildly impressed that Bush was prepared to listen politely, to acknowledge the points they made, and to stress that American remained Europe's firm friend.
From Sweden, Bush flew to the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana, for his first summit with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, widely expected to revive Cold War chills after the expulsion from Washington of a large batch of Russian spies under diplomatic cover. Instead, Bush declared he had been granted a glimpse inside Putin's soul and found a fellow Christian with whom he could do much business and on whose word he could rely.
Bush's relations with China inspired deep concern, after his aides had spoken darkly of an inevitable future strategic rivalry and the messy incident of the mid-air collision that led to a U.S. electronic surveillance aircraft being forced down to a Chinese airfield. Bush has since met former President Jiang Zemin four times, his successor, Hu Jintao, three times, and has visited China twice. And with Beijing and Washington cooperating closely to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis, relations are closer now than ever.
In the abstract, and from a distance, Bush seems far more alien and disturbing to foreigners than he does in person, though his visits are locked within a traveling White House cocoon. The imperial president of the arrogant hyperpower becomes a more human and less forbidding figure.
The global media, always ready to pre-report clashes and disaster rather than wait for the more measured outcome of Bush's meetings, bear some of the blame for this. And the dismal inadequacy of America's public diplomacy, its failure to report the plausible reasons to question the usefulness of the Kyoto Treaty or the potential applications of the International Criminal Court, bears even more.
In short, Bush has become (like Presidents Kennedy and Reagan before him) his own best envoy, an asset the White House should deploy more often, despite the security problems and the imminent re-election campaign. Remote symbols of awesome power assume a more reassuring and even engaging form when seen and heard close to home.
