Who dat?

September 1, 2010, 2:06 pm

Blair Recalls Bush Asked, ‘Who Is This Guy?’ After Meeting Belgium’s Leader

By ROBERT MACKEY

Epa-Ansa/Alessandro Bianchi President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy with other world leaders at a Group of 8 summit meting in Genoa, Italy in 2001. Belgium’s prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, sat directly across a large table from the American president.

While most reports in Britain on the publication of Tony’s Blair’s new memoir have focused on his frank assessment of the weaknesses of his successor, Gordon Brown, one newspaper notes that there are also some recollections that might make another old friend, former President George W. Bush, uncomfortable. The Telegraph reports:

In his new book, A Journey, Mr Blair writes that the former U.S. president was confused by the presence of Guy Verhofstadt at the 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa.
“He didn’t know or recognize Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment,” Mr Blair writes. “He then turned to me and whispered, ‘Who is this guy?’ ‘He is the prime minister of Belgium,’ I said.

Mr. Bush soon became better acquainted with the Belgian leader, who visited the White House later that year and again in 2006, when my colleague Stephen Crowley captured this triptych of Mr. Verhofstadt making the American president laugh while recounting a mountain biking tale:

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times As photographers set up before a news conference at the White House in 2006, Mr. Verhofstadt, amused President Bush with a story about mountain biking.

U.K. election turns to U.S. for Style

Politics makes strange bedfellows is a truism, a cliché, and also true; to wit: The candidates are even bringing in American handlers to help prepare. Mr. Cameron has hired Squier Knapp Dunn Communications—a Washington-based Democratic-leaning political consultancy. Mr. Brown will limber up through role play—a common feature of U.S. debate prep. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former press secretary, will play Mr. Cameron.

The move comes at a moment when the U.S. and the U.K. are casting envious glances at each other when it comes to political debate. In the U.S., there is a groundswell to mimic PMQs and reinject reality into a political process that is tightly stage managed; in Britain, it is about adding civil debate to a political arena that habitually operates in full-on attack mode.

 There is a picture of PM Brown speaking in Parliament during Questions, and a graphic showing 3 pairs of opponents: Gladstone and Disraeli, Callaghan and Thatcher, and Hague and Blair. The first two have barbed wit.

"If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune; an dif anybody pulled him out, that I suppose would be a calamity." Victorian-era PM Benjamin Disraeli on being asked the difference between a misfortune and a calamity.

"After being called a "one-man band" by Laboutr leader James Callaghan, then-opposition leader Margaret Thatcher returned, "Is that not one more man than the government have got?"