Thanking Our Ally

Let Bush be Bush:

Talking about Howard's visit to Iraq last year to thank his country's soldiers serving there, Bush called them "Austrian troops."

That one was fixed for him. Though tapes of the speech clearly show Bush saying "Austrian," the official text released by the White House switched it to "Australian."

Some Aussie commentary:

GEORGE W.Bush is the kind of guy you can't help but like, and not just because he has a nice car. The US President visited Sydney with the sort of security detail the Germans took with them when they visited Poland in 1939.

Sure, the nuclear bomb-proof plane and armour-plated limousines can make him seem a bit remote and stand-offish, but up close he seems like your average knockabout bloke with a personal army of trained assassins.

The juxtaposition was evident literally from the first second he arrived in Sydney.

For more than two years the APEC task force had been planning the summit and preparing, in large part, for his arrival.

Then a few weeks before he was due, George decided he was going to drop into Iraq and would it be too much of an inconvenience if he popped by Sydney a couple of days early?

No, not at all, said somewhere in the vicinity of 5000 police, security officers, government officials and organisers, who turned around half the APEC security program.

Admittedly, his early arrival did cost taxpayers an extra $4 million but, when you look at that figure in the context of the $500-odd million APEC is already costing Australia in security measures and lost business revenue, it's just a drop in the ocean.

...Two days earlier a pair of Hercules C-130 transport planes, so huge they could carry Malcolm Turnbull's ego and still offer him legroom, had landed at RAAF Richmond and dropped off half the presidential convoy and a couple of military helicopters for good measure.

...So, with all the power and menace of a John Wayne walk, the world's most impressive jumbo jet rolled heavily into position before a freezing media and official welcoming party.

And then, as the engines died down and the chopper noise became part of the ambience and the police officers and secret service stood to attention, the front door opened and out stepped this average-sized bloke in a suit, with a big, goofy smile.

Never had a man looked so small and so powerful at the same time.

"Hey," he seemed to be saying. "I'm the leader of the free world. What do you do for a living?"

Throughout the next 24 hours Sydney was - sometimes literally - turned inside out to ensure the absolute safety of the closest thing the mortal world has to a god.

And what was this deity doing? He was contemplating steakburgers and mountain bike riding and bringing freedom to murderous regimes in the Middle East. He seemed like a fun guy.

And, like most fun guys, he has the attention span of Willie Mason at the Easter Show.

...In fact, the President resembled more a comedian than a commander-in-chief. Virtually everything he said ended with a punchline, even if that punchline was rarely grammatically correct.

Indeed, the thing people don't acknowledge about Mr Bush is that he is an excellent speaker, even though much of what he says either doesn't actually make sense or is so simplistic it could have fallen from the mouth of a five-year-old.

For example: "It's important for our trading partners to be wealthy enough to have something to trade."

He takes to the stage like an evangelical lay preacher, speaking emotively with strong and clear body language and perfect cadences - throw in a few jokes and the rest of the words hardly even matter. By the end, half the journos in the room weren't sure whether to file or applaud.

Yes, you might not want George W.Bush running the most powerful country in the world but you can't help feeling it would be great to have a beer with the bloke.

A shame he doesn't drink any more.