I gave the president my book. He raised an eyebrow. “Who wrote this forya, Geldof?” he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. “Who will you get to read it for you, Mr President?” I replied. No response.

The Most Powerful Man in the World studied the front cover: “Geldof in Africa. The International Bestseller. You write that bit yourself?”

“That’s right. It’s called marketing. Something you obviously have no clue about or else I wouldn’t have to be here telling people your Africa story!”

It’s some story and I have always wondered why it was never told properly to the American people who were paying for it. “I tried to tell them,” says Bush. “But the press weren’t much interested.”

It’s half true. There were always a couple of lines in the State of the Union but not such that anyone noticed and the press really weren’t interested. For them, like America itself, Africa is a continent of which little is known save the odd horror.

That’s changed. With China, India and the US competing for its resources, and Europe separated from it by only eight miles, Africa is the place where the very real and very serious 21st-century competition will play itself out. It is the last continent yet to be built and it’s proper grown-up politics now.

We sat in the large wood-panelled conference room of Air Force One as she cruised the skies of the immense African continent. As we sat around the great oval table, I wondered how changed was the man who in 2000 had said, “America has no strategic interest in Africa.”

“Hold on a minute. I said that in response to a military question . . . Condi, canya get in here,” he shouts out the open door, leaning back in his chair.

The secretary of state, glamorous and fresh despite having being diverted to Kenya to articulate the United States’ concern over matters there, then back to Rwanda to join her boss, sits down opposite. “Hi, Bob.” “Hi, Condi.” It’s weird. Like being inside a living TV screen.

Bush asks her whether she remembers the context of the “no strategic interest” question. She confirms it was regarding America’s military strategies inside Africa. But 2000 is so long ago, another century. Another universe. I ask him if it is the same today.

“Yes sir,” he says. “Well, if America has no military interest in Africa, then what is Africom for?”

People in Africa are worried about Africom, a new, seemingly military command. I thought it was an inappropriate and kneejerk US militaristic response to clumsy Chinese mercantilism that could only end in tears for everyone concerned.

“That’s ridiculous. We’re still working on it. We’re trying to build a humanitarian mission that would train up soldiers for peace and security so that African nations are more capable of dealing with Africa’s conflicts. You agree with that don’tcha?”

Indeed I do. The British intervention in Sierra Leone prevented catastrophe, as did US action in Liberia. Security, conflict resolution, professional armies and policing can help to prevent the thugs who are only intent on mayhem.

Later, in public, Bush will say: “I want to dispel the notion that America is bringing all kinds of military to the African continent. It’s simply not true. It’s baloney, or – as we say in Texas – it’s bull!”

Trouble is, it sounds a lot like what America did in the early Vietnam years with the advisers who became something else. Mission creep, I think it’s called.

“No, that won’t happen,” Bush insists. “We’re still working on what exactly it’ll be, but it will be a humanitarian mission. Peace and security issues involving the state and defence departments. But it’s a new concept and we want to get it right.”

He muses for a while on the US and China and their policies on Africa – Africans are increasingly resentful that the Chinese bring their own labour force and supplies with them. “One thing I will say,” Bush adds, in what I take to be a reference to Darfur and the Chinese influence or otherwise over the cynical Khartoum regime, “human suffering should preempt commercial interest.”

It’s a wonderful sentence and it comes in the wake of his visit to the Rwandan genocide memorial museum. This is built on the site of a still-being-filled open grave. So far there are 250,000 individuals tumbled together in an undifferentiated tangle of humanity in that hole. The president and first lady were visibly shocked and moved by the museum.

“Evil does exist,” Bush says in reaction to the 1994 massacres, “and in such a brutal form.”

He is not speechifying, he is horror-struck by the reality of ethnic madness. “Smashed babies’ skulls . . .” he says. The sentence peters out as if there are no more words to describe the ultimately incomprehensible.

President Clinton says his failure in Rwanda keeps him awake. Bush has many of his own demons to occupy the sleepless future but he doesn’t want Darfur among them. The lesson learnt from Rwanda must be, he states, “pay attention to the warning signs. Prevent crises like this happening. Don’t send observers. Send force. Enough to stop it”.

This is a very 21st-century fight. A government with raw resources can now reach its furthest regions through communication and transport, upsetting the old ways of land and resource rights and the struggle for wealth over supposed oil finds. This in turn spills over into neigh-bouring countries, upsetting the regional equilibrium, and we seem impotent while we pruriently observe the slaughter from our living rooms.

What should we do? Impose a wall of peacekeepers first, stop the massacre and rape and begin negotiating? But it seems we can’t. Checkmate. The president is visibly frustrated. “The UN is so slow, but we must act,” he repeats.

That may very well be his wish but, because of America’s intervention elsewhere and his own preemptive philosophy, it is now politically impossible and unacceptable to the world for America to engage unilaterally for the foreseeable future. By his own deeds, he has rendered US action in Darfur impotent.

As for the rest of the world, for all their oft-spoken pieties they seem to be able to agree on precisely nothing. Meanwhile, the rape and killing continue, Khartoum plays its game of murder and we won’t even pay for six helicopters that the United Nations forces need to protect themselves. Pathetic. EARLIER, in his private lounge, which is just behind the bedroom and the twin beds with blue blankets, complete with presidential seal, we had talked of personal stuff. I’d been asking about the laundry arrangements. Like, how do they get the presidential shirts, socks, undies etc done on this thing?

I’m used to rock’n’roll tours where a washing machine and dryers are set up every day backstage, but this was gigging on whole other levels. At least 20 military transporters haul presidential necessities around the planet.

At our hotel in Ghana, the porter carrying my bag said they had thrown out all the guests because “the President of the World” was coming. It was true. An apoplectic German at the desk was threatening international court cases as his luggage was slung contemptuously from his room. The Yanks were coming; 800 rooms were needed – out you go!

“Laundry, huh?” the president muses. “I don’t know the answer to that one. Why you interested?”

“Touring, y’know. How you do it. That stuff interests me.”

“Yeah. Y’know, I’ve never asked that. I usually just wear the same thing all day. But if I need to change there’s always a room I can go to. Laundry, huh? Is this the interview, Geldof? It’s certainly a different technique!”

He’s showing me around cos I’ve asked can I get Air Force One stuff to bring home to the kids. “You got four right? Hey guys, get Geldof the links and pins and stuff. And the M&Ms. Dja know I got my own presidential M&Ms?”

“Wow.” “Yeah, cool, right? They’ll love them.” They did. They’re in a presidential box with his autograph on them. The Queen doesn’t have that. Or the Pope. And I muse later from car 25 in the 33-car motorcade (an exercise in humility being just behind the armoured presidential ambulance and in front of the local press) that there are probably only three people in the world who can bring crowds like this out onto the street – the Queen, the Pope and the President of the United States. Only one is a politician. And only one has his own M&Ms.

“Jed,” the president says to the man doing the ironing between the twin beds, “how do we do the laundry on this thing?”

“We use hotels, sir.” Aaah. Nobody else gets beds. The exhausted secret service guys, the secretaries of state, the chief of staff, the assistants and advisers and the press pool attempt an exhausted and fitful sleep in the grey and beige reclining seats. Some give up the unequal struggle and order dinner. There’s no choice and it’s okay. Not fantastic food but decentish wine and it’s served by nicely uniformed, friendly waiters.

Up front we’re knocking back the Cokes. The first lady – elegant, composed – is reading on the L-shaped sofa, her legs tucked under her. The president, constantly energetic, throws himself into a chair in front of me and sprawls comfortably, Texas style. He asks about growing up in Dublin.

“Was it poor then?” Very. “Huh. What your dad do? Your mom? How’d you and Bono meet up? You knew each other back then? What’s his real name?”

I don’t know how, but eventually we arrive at the great unspoken. “I believe we’re in an ideological struggle with extremism,” says the president. “These people prey on the hopeless. Hopeless-ness breeds terrorism. That’s why this trip is a mission undertaken with the deepest sense of humanity, because those other folks will just use vulnerable people for evil. Like in Iraq.”

I don’t want to go there. I have my views and they’re at odds with his, and I don’t want either to spoil the interview or to be rude in the face of his hospitality. “Ah, look Mr President, I don’t want to do this really. We’ll get distracted and I’m here to do Africa with you.”

“Okay, but we got rid of tyranny.” It sounded too much like the television Bush. It sounded too justificatory.

He doesn’t ever have to justify his Africa policy. This is the person who on his watch has quadrupled aid to the poorest people on the planet. I was more comfortable with that. But his expression, I felt, wanted at least agreement and sympathy and I couldn’t do that.

“Mr President, please . . . there are things you’ve done I could never possibly agree with and there are things I’ve done in my life that you would disapprove of, too. And that would make your hospitality awkward. The cost has been too much. History will play itself out. Let’s see . . .”

“I think history will prove me right,” he shoots back.

“Who knows,” I say. It wasn’t awkward. It wasn’t uncomfortable. He is convinced, like Blair, that he made the right decision.

“I’m comfortable with that decision,” he says, like he does on TV. But he can’t be. The law of unintended consequences must make sure of that.

At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for decent policy like here in Africa because many people view him “as a walking crime against humanity”. He looks very hurt by that. And I’m sorry I said it because he’s a very likeable fellow.

“C’mon,” he says, “let’s move next door and let Laura alone.”

“I spoke to Blair about you before I came on the plane.”

“Tony Blair? What’d he say.” “He said you don’t see colour. To remember that you employed the first black secretaries of states, that your world view had changed since you began and that Condi was a big influence with regard to Africa.”

“So you were a big influence on me . . .” he says to Condi.

“I don’t think so . . .” “Nah, I’ve always been like this.” “But now you sound like a hippie, for God’s sake,” I say. He laughs.

I HAVE always read that Bush mangles the language and have laughed at the many Bushisms. He would deny it, but I think he’s sensitive about it and he shrugs it off self-mockingly.

But in public and with me he spoke fluently and often in wonderful aphorisms. Of course he has several verbal ticks; but here in Africa, where he is liked and viewed as a friend, perhaps he was more relaxed. Less guarded.

Here are some examples. None is from speeches or prepared texts. They are as important as to what it says of the man and policy as they are well framed and clear.

“Human suffering should preempt commercial interests.”

“Stop coming to Africa feeling guilty. Come with love and feeling confident for its future.”

“I like courage and compassion. We are a nation of courageous and compassionate people.”

“When we see hunger we feed them. Not to spread our influence, but because they’re hungry.”

“Evil does exist and in such brutal forms.”

“Outside forces tend to divide people.” “US solutions should not be imposed on African leaders.”

“Africa has changed since I’ve become president. Not because of me, but because of African leaders.”

Some of these thoughts, were they applied to Iraq, would have profound implications on the change in the man’s understanding of how the world functions.

Outside forces tend to divide people! US solutions should not be imposed on African leaders! Imagine those wise statements applied to Mid-East reality.

Of course it would be ridiculous to be the president of the United States and not change as a person or in your understanding of the world. I suggest that his commitment to and understanding of Africa has been revolutionary in its interest curve.

“That’s not true,” he says. “In my second debate with Al Gore I came out for debt cancellation and Aids relief. I called Aids a genocide. I felt and still do that it was unacceptable to stand by and let a generation be eradicated.” Again great language.

George W Bush, I think, is an emotional man. But sometimes he’s a sentimentalist and that’s different. He is in love with America. Not the idea of America but rather an inchoate notion of a space. A glorious metaphysical entity. America the Good, the Just and the Fair. The shining city on the hill.

It is clear, however, that since its mendacious beginnings the Iraq war has thrown up a series of abuses that disgrace America’s central proposition. In the need to find morally neutralising euphemisms to describe torture and abuse, the language itself became tortuous and abused. Rendition, waterboarding, Guan-tanamo, Abu Ghraib are all code for what America is not.

The Bush regime has been divisive. But not in Africa. I read it has been incompetent. But not in Africa. It has created bitterness. But not here in Africa. Bush can’t do oratory. He can in Africa. Here’s why. His administration has saved millions of lives and has helped 29m children to go to school for the first time.

Bush initiated the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. In 2003, only 50,000 Africans were on HIV antiretroviral drugs – and they had to pay for their own medicine. Today, 1.3m are receiving medicines free of charge. The US also contributes one-third of the money for the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which treats another 1.5m.

And on his seven-day trip through Africa, Bush announced a fantastic new $350m fund for other tropical diseases that can be easily eradicated; a programme to distribute 5.2m mosquito nets to Tanza-nian kids; and contracts worth around $1.2 billion in Tanzania and Ghana from the Millennium Challenge Account, a Bush initiative that focuses on anticorruption, law, infrastructure and poverty reduction programmes.

You forget that Bush is an MBA graduate. He thinks like a businessman in terms of Bottom Line. Results. Profit and Loss. There is an empiricism to a lot of his furthest reaching policies in Africa and he’s, correctly, big on trade.

“My predecessor started the African Growth and Opportunities Act [AGOA] and I’ve reauthorised it twice,” he says. This is a reference to a modestly revolutionary trade bill that allows 900 previously heavily taxed African exports to enter America tax free. The result has been startling. The tiny country of Lesotho now has 42% of its people employed in the garment trade exporting to America. Although 90% of African exports to the US is still oil, AGOA is precisely the sort of coherent thinking that will change things for Africa.

“A 1% increase in trade from Africa will mean more money than all the aid put together annually. That’s why we got to do Doha,” Bush says, referring to the world trade negotiations.

I don’t believe the so-called Doha Round will be achieved. Some form of nonsense will be cobbled together to hide what will be a pathetic failure but one thing is sure: there will be no benefit in it for the poor of Africa in whose name it was convened. “Why can’t we do a stand-alone trade deal for Africa, targeting the specific needs of the trade conditions on this continent?” I ask.

“What, a sort of AGOA Plus?” Bush says. “Yeah, there could be something there, but let’s do Doha first.”

We talk of how the little that Africa exports is still greater than what it trades within the continent. “Because there’s more landlocked countries in Africa than anywhere else in the world,” I say “So they can’t get their stuff to market?” “Exactly. You have to pay so many tariffs at each border, by the time you get to the coast you’re overpriced.”

“You gotta dismantle the borders then.” “Yes, but a lot of countries derive their income from those cross-border tariffs. You have to help take them down. Aid for trade.”

“Right,” he says, thinking. He’s curious and quick. “Africa has got to get into value-added production. There’s got to be investment there.”

The president is right again, referring to the need for Africans to stop sending us steel to make knives when they should be making the cutlery themselves. Or the juice and not the orange. The chocolate and not the bean. The shirt and not the cotton. The bracelet and not the diamond. That’s where the real money is and Bush really gets this stuff.

We talk of Zimbabwe – “sad, tragic. Disappointed with the South Africans” – Ethiopia, Eritrea and on and on as we fly on over this magnificent continent.

“We’re just getting started here,” says Bush, thinking of his successor in the White House. “Whoever is president will understand that Africa is in our nation’s interest. They are wonderful people.”

HE went to have a nap clutching the book I gave him. Next day he told some jokes from it. Maybe to prove he read it.

I went back to the guest lounge. Jendayi Frazier, the assistant secretary of state for Africa, and Bobby Pittman, the national security adviser on Africa, and I stayed awake as the pitch night engulfed us, punctuated only by the giant orange gas flares of the oil rigs on the Gulf of Guinea.

We ate our popcorn, drank our Cokes and watched Batman Begins as the air space was cleared for miles around us. America was flying through the warm African night and I was hitching a ride on her.

Dubya on the road

At a lunch for Peace Corps volunteers, Bush makes the guests relaxed and easy with him. “What’s social life like here?”he asks a middle-aged man disarmingly.

“What’s social life like anywhere at 59?” the man answers.

“Tell me about it,” says George Bush, 61. “Bed at 6.30!”

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