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Journalism of Courage
For nearly two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama rarely missed a chance to take a swipe at President Bush. The name George W Bush invariably followed the phrase “failed policies” in Obama’s speeches. “When George Bush steps down,” Obama once declared, “the world is going to breathe a sigh of relief”.
On Monday, Obama found himself conveniently forgetting those words — or at least delicately stepping around the fact that he had said them. He was preparing for a visit to the White House at 2 PM EST (12.30 AM IST, Tuesday) as an honoured guest of Bush for a meeting that could turn out to be as awkward as it is historic.
Obama and his wife Michelle will receive a tour of their new home from Bush and first lady Laura Bush. The men, then, are to begin the formal transfer of power, all the more urgent this year because of the financial crisis. Obama has said he expects a “substantive conversation between myself and the President”.
There will also be a subtext to the session: the personal chemistry between two leaders whose worldviews are miles apart. The ritual visit is occurring uncommonly early this year, less than a week after Obama handily defeated John McCain.
Bush and Obama have had little chance to forge the kind of personal relationship that might prompt a smooth handoff. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote less than admiringly of his first face-to-face encounter with the President, at a White House breakfast for new senators after the 2004 election.
“The President’s eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty,” Obama wrote. “As I watched my mostly Republican Senate colleagues hang on his every word, I was reminded of the dangerous isolation that power can bring.”
Bush, meanwhile, was privately critical of Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary race, telling friends that Hillary Clinton, was “more experienced and more ready to be President”, said a friend of Bush’s.
For Bush, the meeting has a distinct upside: the chance to take the edge off his unpopularity. Democrats are already praising him as gracious for his post-election speech in the Rose Garden, where he said it would be a “stirring sight” to see the Obama family move into the White House. The meeting on Monday will give Bush an opportunity to produce lasting images of that graciousness.
But such meetings can be fraught with political and personal danger. On Inauguration Day in 2001, President Bill Clinton invited Bush for coffee, but kept his ever-punctual successor waiting for 10 minutes, recalled Bush’s first press secretary, Ari Fleischer. Even more uncomfortable was the presence of Vice-President Al Gore, who lost the presidential election to Bush after a bitterly contested Florida recount.
Obama visited the White House this September for the meeting on the financial rescue package. House Republicans, backed by McCain, balked at the plan. Curiously enough, Obama and Bush were on the same side.
Perhaps Obama will remind Bush of that. Or perhaps he will remind Bush of the encounter in January 2005 when, according to Obama’s book, the President offered a dollop of hand sanitiser — “Not wanting to seem unhygienic”, Obama wrote, “I took a squirt” — and then pulled him aside for some unsolicited political advice.
