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.”
I’ve been thinking the same thing for days. When I saw that insulting backdrop, as if we don’t already know George is doing the U.K., I took the thought seriously.
Someone pointed out that Bush has used the UK as aircraft carrier #2.
There was a clip on the news showing the view George would have been getting from inside Buckingham Palace. The streets were completely deserted, there wasn’t a soul to be seen except for security police.
So certainly he can’t help but see what his policies have done. America is like George in the palace. Isolated and despised.
And if he wasn’t spending so much of our tax dollars on these photo ops, we might be as heavily fortressed.
Supposedly the policing and security bill for us here for his visit is 5 million pounds. His jaunt tomorrow to Blair’s constituency in the NE of England is reputed to be costing us 1 million.
And yes, no-one’s seen the guy except for a few invited guests. He certainly hasn’t done a meet and greet walkabout. How ironic that the leader of “the free world” is so popular that he has to be guarded from his own subjects. He had had more security here than the queen has ever had.