MONROVIA, Liberia — The contingent of reporters accompanying President Bush on his trip to Africa was small, a reflection of how the press is turning its attention away from the current president and toward the race to succeed him. But in Rwanda this week, Mr. Bush had a celebrity journalist in his entourage: Bob Geldof, the Irish rock star.
Dressed head to toe in cream-colored linen, with a press badge dangling from his neck, Mr. Geldof, who has made ending poverty in Africa a personal cause, turned up in Kigali for a news conference with Mr. Bush and President Paul Kagame. He was on assignment for Time, to write up his impressions.
And he has no shortage of them. He does not agree with Mr. Bush on Iraq, but he is convinced that the president has undergone some sort of epiphany about Africa.
“I talked to Tony Blair about this before I came,” Mr. Geldof said, in a bit of name-dropping. He added, “I used to say that here was a man who came to power believing that California was foreign policy, and has ended up understanding that Kenya is domestic policy.”
Mr. Geldof, of course, is no ordinary reporter. He mingles with a different crowd.
“Presidents, prime ministers, princes, popes, pop stars,” he said. “It’s all the same.” And so, he enjoyed a few special perks.
There was, for instance, the flight on Air Force One. Not in the crowded press cabin in the back, mind you, but up front in presidential splendor. There, by Mr. Geldof’s account, he and the president swapped stories about life on the road (Mr. Geldof was particularly interested in how the White House handles presidential laundry) and talked policy.
Unlike most reporters, who count themselves lucky if they leave the plane with little boxes of M&Ms bearing the presidential seal, Mr. Geldof got much better trinkets: presidential cuff links for his four daughters.
The trip may have been smooth for Mr. Geldof, but not so for everyone. The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, became dehydrated and was treated by the White House physician. Ben Feller of The Associated Press became ill, prompting Mr. Bush to ask if he had vomited that day. (“That’s off the record,” Mr. Feller replied.) Jon Ward of The Washington Times rushed through a plate glass window at the Executive Mansion in Monrovia, suffering only minor cuts.
And Deborah Charles of Reuters fell and broke her hand in Rwanda. At the next stop, in Accra, Ghana, Mr. Bush pulled a black marker out of his suit pocket, signed Ms. Charles’s cast and implored President John Kufuor to do the same. Here in Monrovia, Mr. Bush prodded President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to sign it as well.
“When you put it on eBay,” the president told Ms. Charles, “I won’t expect a commission.”
A Name on Drivers’ Lips
Whenever the president travels, he invariably ties up traffic. But the gridlock was especially bad in Accra, where cars were stopped for hours on Wednesday as Mr. Bush’s big black Chevrolet Suburban, with a motorcade of some two dozen vehicles, wended its way through town.
So it seemed out of place when President Kufuor announced that a nine-mile road being rebuilt with American tax dollars would be renamed the George Bush Motorway. That prompted Mr. Bush to pledge that if he returned and road on his motorway, “we will not shut the highway down.”
A Little Less Footloose
When President Bush commemorated Malaria Awareness Day in the White House Rose Garden with an African dance and drum troupe last April, his shimmying and shaking landed him all over the Internet under headlines like “You Gotta See This Video” and “Bush Dance.”
This week in Africa, Mr. Bush had plenty of opportunities for an encore. Everywhere he went, it seemed, he was entertained with African dance, each performance more dazzling than the last.
Despite the ever-present dancing, Mr. Bush restrained himself, keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground. At a state dinner in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, he stood through 10 minutes of whooping and hollering, smiling and nodding his head politely and occasionally pointing at the dancers. Later, he posed for pictures.
But as the trip was winding down, Mr. Bush let loose at a dinner in Accra and again at a lunch with President Johnson Sirleaf in Monrovia — another moment to live on in YouTube.
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