No matter how many years one spends in Washington, lunch with the president of
the United States is an exciting prospect. Entering through a special door
not accessible to tourist riffraff and the tight security only heighten the
sense you are entering a special realm.
Ubiquitous aides guide you efficiently down corridors lined with portraits of
past occupants to the Old Family Dining Room where Churchill and Roosevelt
brainstormed in the second world war. With its oriental rugs and dark
polished furniture, the White House is like a smart English home.
I was there to attend one of George Bush’s frequent lunches for small groups
of writers, historians and journalists to discuss an issue or book that has
caught his eye. It was an intimate affair: the historian Andrew Roberts and
I had to squeeze our chairs together to allow the vice-president, Dick
Cheney, to pull his up to the table.
“Do you think that when Gordon Brown steps into Tony Blair’s shoes our
relationship with Britain will change?” I asked Cheney as we waited for the
president. “I really don’t know much about Brown,” was the response.
And then in came the president. Bush is taller than he seems on television and
chirpier. He is also refreshingly free of the pretence so common in this
town. “Let’s eat,” he said and explained we were gathered to discuss
Roberts’s book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples because “history
informs the present”. His goals, he said, were to see what history can teach
us today and to “pander to you powerful opinion-makers”. Such humour is
typical of the man. In addition to Roberts and myself the group included the
historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, neocon Norman Podhoretz and theologian
Michael Novak.
The president divulged with convincing calm that when it comes to pressure, “I
just don’t feel any”. Why? His constituency, he feels, is the divine
presence, to whom he must answer. Don’t misunderstand: God didn’t tell him
to put troops in harm’s way in Iraq; his belief only goes so far as to
inform him that there is good and evil. It is the president who must figure
out how to promote the former and destroy the latter. And he is confident
that his policies are doing just that.
He is well aware that this view is a political nonstarter in Britain. Bush
remembered that it was Alastair Campbell who was reported to have said “We
don’t do God”. And he frowned as he recalled that Blair’s advisers had
dissuaded him from saying “God bless you” as he sent British troops off to
Iraq.
All of this led the president to turn the conversation to the old question of
what exactly is “evil” and what constitutes “good”. The discussion centred
on Novak’s contention that although there is indeed evil, there is no such
thing as absolute good. The president didn’t buy that line. Bush’s
formulation is that we are engaged in a war between absolute evil and good
principles. These principles, the president said, are practised by
imperfectly good men.
I then asked what the relationship of the US and the UK would be in a
postBlair world. Roberts told Bush that the United States would have no
problem with Brown, who is pro-American. David Cameron, was another matter,
said Roberts, citing the Tory leader’s speech on the fifth anniversary of
September 11, calling for an end to Britain’s “slavish” relationship with
the United States.
Bush was unperturbed. The special relationship is “unbelievably powerful”, he
said, and transcends such differences as exist between any president and
prime minister. “Who would have thought that a left-of-centre prime minister
and a conservative president could combine as we have done to try to bring
democracy to Iraq?”
But the president did want to know more about the extent and reasons for the
rise of antiAmerican feeling in Britain. “Is it due simply to my
personality?” he wondered, half-seriously (he is unoffended when made the
butt of a joke). “Is it confined to intellectuals?” asked one guest. Roberts
said no British intellectual would style himself such and Bush quipped:
“Neither would a Texas politician.”
The president was told that antiAmericanism was caused to some extent by
dislike of Bush but was also due to the war in Iraq; antiIsrael,
pro-Palestinian sentiment, laced with some covert antisemitism; and
resentment of American power. I added an anecdote, recalling that my wife
Cita and I abruptly left a posh London dinner party when the guests began
attacking Bush and the US. “Many thanks for that, but you’d better not move
to New York City or you will starve to death,” said the president, to a
chorus of “Amen” from the New Yorkers at the table.
On to Roberts’s lessons of history. First: do not set a deadline for
withdrawal from Iraq. That led to the slaughter of 700,000 people in India,
with the killing beginning one minute after the midnight deadline. Bush
wondered if there were examples of occupying forces remaining for long
periods other than in Korea. Roberts suggested Malaysia where it took nine
years to defeat the communists, after which the occupying troops remained
for several years. And Algeria, added Bush, citing Alistair Horne’s A Savage
War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 for the proposition that more Algerians were
killed after the French withdrawal than during the French occupation.
Second lesson: will trumps wealth. The Romans, the tsars and other rich world
powers fell to poorer ones because they lacked the will to fight and
survive. Whereas the second world war was almost over before Americans saw
the first picture of a dead soldier, today the steady drumbeat of media
pessimism and television coverage are sapping the West’s will.
Third lesson: don’t hesitate to intern your enemies for long periods. That
policy worked in Ireland and during the second world war. Release should
only follow victory.
Lesson four: cling to the alliance of the English-speaking peoples. Although
many nations are engaged in the coalition in Iraq and Afghanistan, troops
from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are doing the heavy lifting.
The closing note was more sombre. Roberts told Bush that history would judge
him on whether he had prevented the nuclearisation of the Middle East. If
Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries would follow.
The only response was a serious frown and a nod.
One hour after we had taken our seats the president said, “Have to go to
work”, mingled for a few minutes, and left. I was left with the impression
that he is a man comfortable in his own skin; whose religious faith guides
him in his search for the good. Unlike his television persona he is a fluent
speaker and well read. Ultimately he believes that the president must be
“the decider”, and that’s fine with him.
