Keeping the Natives Offstage: Bush's PR Problem

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27057-2003Dec1.html

washingtonpost.com
Bush's PR Problem


By Fareed Zakaria

Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A27


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 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 Bush's recent trip there. Even more striking, however, was the
comparison repeatedly made between Bush's visit and that of Chinese
President Hu Jintao -- with a thumping majority believing Hu had done
better.

In Thailand at the meeting for the 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: huge numbers 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.) Bush's trip to London
two weeks ago is now being heralded as a great success. But here is how one
of the president's most ardent supporters, his former speechwriter David
Frum, saw it while in London himself. "Bush was sealed away from London for
the entire visit. There was no drive down the Mall, no address to
Parliament, no public events at all," Frum wrote in his Weblog on National
Review Online. "The trip's planners reduced the risk of confrontations --
but only by broadcasting to the British public their tacit acknowledgement
that the visit was unpopular and unwelcome. By eliminating from the
president's schedule events with any touch of spontaneity or public contact,
the trip planners made the president look as if he could not or would not
engage with ordinary British people." In Great Britain, Frum concluded, "the
United States has a problem, a big one -- and it was made worse, not better,
by this recent visit."

But the deeper problem is not one of style but of substance. Bush's trips to
Southeast Asia and Australia focused single-mindedly on the war on terror.
Karim Raslan, a Malaysian writer, explained the local reaction: "Bush came
to an economic group [APEC] and talked obsessively about terror. He sees all
of us through that one prism. Yes, we worry about terror, but frankly that's
not the sum of our lives. We have many other problems. We're retooling our
economies, we're wondering how to deal with the rise of China, we're trying
to address health, social and environmental problems. Hu talked about all
this; he talked about our agenda, not just his agenda."

There is a lack of empathy emanating from Washington. After the Bali
bombings, which were Australia's Sept. 11, the administration did not bother
to send a high-level envoy to a steadfast ally for condolences. Australians
had to make do with a videotape of George Bush. Even last week, Bush could
surely have arranged to meet in Baghdad with a few troops from allied
countries who are also fighting and dying in Iraq.

What is most dismaying about this state of affairs is that for the past 50
years the United States has skillfully merged its own agenda with the
agendas of others, creating a sense of shared interests and values. When
Presidents Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy waged the Cold War, they also
presented the world with a constructive agenda dealing with trade, poverty
and health. They fought communism with one hand and offered hope with the
other. We have fallen far from that model if the head of the Chinese
Communist Party is seen as presenting the world with a more progressive
agenda than the president of the world's leading democracy.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

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"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so
long as I'm the dictator." - GW Bush 12/18/2000.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that
we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of
Iraq."
-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz,