Newsweek: No Way to Make Friends

[kskiska]

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

President Bush’s Thanksgiving trip to Iraq was a generous and bold-hearted gesture of support to American troops. What made it such a success, however, was that it managed to severely limit an otherwise unavoidable aspect of travel—contact with foreigners. When President Bush has had to go beyond U.S. Army bases in recent weeks, the tours have not gone so well.

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.
IMG: Health For Life
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.)

more…
http://www.msnbc.com/news/999366.asp

[teryang]

1. Self interest and its corrolaries, fear and greed

...are the only things understood by this administration. This editorial was very perceptive. The corporatists are prisoners of their world view. It will be this administrations down fall, sooner or later.

"Come let us reason together" and politics of consensus are completely alien to them. Never give a sucker an even break is their operating principle. The war of terrorism and persistent compulsive ideological bombast is its disguise.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. Chinese leader Hu Jintao doesn't need

a huge security detail because the terraists don't hate China for its freedoms -- at least that's what the Bushies would like you to believe.

Of course, Bill Clinton was able to travel abroad and mingle freely with the general public and the USA was arguably much freer during his time in office. Although there was allegedly a lot of resentment against him among our military, I think he could also visit military installations without being surrounded by Secret Service in camos.