Over the last two weeks, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made separate trips to Vietnam. Let’s take a moment to compare and contrast, shall we?
Clinton was in Hanoi today, where he was swarmed by throngs of admirers seeking autographs, handshakes and photographs.
Clinton, in town to sign an agreement between his foundation and the Vietnamese to get more AIDS drugs to children, left the Hilton Hotel in the center of Hanoi, crossed an intersection buzzing with motorbikes, and strolled toward Hoan Kiem Lake, the spiritual heart of the city. […]
“I love you!” a young man shouted, reaching over the crowd for a handshake.
“There are no words to describe how happy I am,” squealed 17-year-old Nguyen Thu Hang, jumping up and down and clutching Clinton’s freshly signed autograph. “I’m going to frame this and hang it on my bedroom wall!”
Followed by Secret Service agents and Vietnamese police, Clinton stopped along a half-mile route to chat with his Vietnamese admirers before making his way to an art gallery in Hanoi’s Old Quarter and then to the tomb of Ho Chi Minh, who led Vietnam’s communist revolution.
After he and Health Minister Tran Thi Trung Chien signed the pediatric AIDS agreement, Clinton took part in a discussion about AIDS with several university students and a young woman living with HIV.
And then, there’s Bush, who was in Vietnam for four days during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
From the report out of Hanoi two weeks ago:
President Bush likes speed golf and speed tourism – this is the man who did the treasures of Red Square in less than 20 minutes – but here in the lake-studded capital of a nation desperately eager to connect with America, he set a record.
On Saturday, Mr. Bush emerged from his hotel for only one nonofficial event…. Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, conceded that the president had not come into direct contact with ordinary Vietnamese, but said that they connected anyway.
“If you’d been part of the president’s motorcade as we’ve shuttled back and forth,” he said, reporters would have seen that “the president has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles.”
It’s probably safe to assume Bush won’t return to Vietnam in six years, swarmed by well wishes and screaming fans, on his way to cultural landmarks and chats with local people.
For all the concerns that Americans are no longer liked around the world, I sometimes think our stature will improve around, say, January 2009.