Really, you couldn’t make this up if you tried:
President Bush likes speed golf and speed tourism — this is the man who did the treasures of Red Square in less than 20 minutes — but here in the lake-studded capital of a nation desperately eager to connect with America, he set a record.
On Saturday, Mr. Bush emerged from his hotel for only one nonofficial event, a 15-minute visit to the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command…
…The mood of this trip could not have been more different from the visit of another president, Bill Clinton, exactly six years ago this weekend, when he seemed to be everywhere…
In 2000, tens of thousands of Hanoi’s residents poured into the streets to witness the visit of the first American head of state since the end of the Vietnam War. Mr. Clinton toured the thousand-year-old Temple of Literature, grabbed lunch at a noodle shop, argued with Communist Party leaders about American imperialism and sifted the earth for the remains of a missing airman.
On Saturday, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, conceded that the president had not come into direct contact with ordinary Vietnamese, but said that they connected anyway.
“If you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, reporters would have seen that “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.”
He continued: “I think he’s gotten a real sense of the warmth of the Vietnamese people and their willingness to put a very difficult period for both the United States and Vietnam behind them.”
Perhaps, but the Vietnamese have barely seen or heard from Mr. Bush.
It’s no surprise that this is a man so incurious about the world that he can’t be bothered to meet a single ordinary, every day Vietnamese person though he’s spending days in the country attending the ASEAN conference. We should start calling him “Incurious George” in mock tribute to a monkey from a children’s book who seemed to muster more curiosity than our own president. We can’t be rid of him too soon. And in case the Secret Service is watching, I meant the next election.
This sounds like his trip last year to South Korea where (according to press reports) he ate all his meals at the local Outback Steak House… Nothing like the boy in the bubble as our president… (Only two more years!)
I am stunned every time anew, although I shouldn’t be, that anyone can make such ludicrously stupid, illogical and so clearly self-serving statements. And to think this is our national security adviser…