Bush Avoids Limelight on World Stage

QUEBEC CITY —  He was chummy, wrapping his arm around the prime minister of a small Caribbean nation, sharing his limo with Mexico’s chief executive and pulling Panama’s small president, the only female at the gathering, into the front row for a group photo when no one could see her in the back.

He was deferentially low-key, listening more often than talking.

“I grew up in a world where if you treat your neighbor well, it’s a good start to developing a wholesome community,” he told the Summit of the Americas here.

And he added color to formal meetings with a now-familiar brand of gaffes--and self-deprecating humor. He addressed the French-speaking Canadian prime minister as “amigo.” He spelled out “A-I-D-S,” the deadly immune-deficiency disease, in discussing challenges facing a globalizing world. At a photo op, he said he wouldn’t take any questions, “neither in French, nor in English, nor in Mexican.”

George Bush was at his good-old-boy-from-Texas best for his debut in big-time international diplomacy in Quebec City this weekend. Despite the conference pomp and his own position as leader of the world’s richest and most powerful nation, the president played it simple and straight during the three-day meeting to negotiate details of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

“He always has a direct, plain-speaking approach that includes meetings with foreign leaders. He doesn’t beat around the bush,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Sunday.

Bush got nice reviews from some of his counterparts.

“Very informal, very open. He was very clear, very transparent. He was very sincere in his dialogue with us, and I think that, in good part, led to the success of the meeting,” Colombian President Andres Pastrana said.

Yet Bush dabbled rather than dive into diplomacy with his counterparts from throughout the two American continents--every country save Cuba.

He was not particularly statesmanlike, according to Republican advisors to previous presidents. His performance was comparable to an out-of-town Broadway tryout, a dry run before he hits the big time with the Group of 8 summit of major industrialized nations this summer in Italy, said Lyn Nofziger, a senior aide to President Reagan--another president initially unfamiliar with international diplomacy.

In neither style nor substance did Bush seem the political heir of Richard Nixon, Reagan or even his own father. His brief debut speech offered lofty praise of free markets but no overarching vision and few specifics or principles about the summit’s historic--and controversial--attempt to forge the world’s largest and most ambitious trade bloc.

“And these leaders aren’t heavyweights. They’re all dependent on the colossus to the north,” said a prominent Washington Republican who asked to remain anonymous because he works closely with the White House.

Bush also did little in Quebec City to “establish” his foreign policy, this Republican added, noting that in every picture, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell loomed large and close behind the president. Powell is the administration’s heavy hitter on foreign policy.

And the president was repeatedly upstaged by what happened outside the summit. At times, he seemed isolated in well-guarded motorcades, convention halls and luxury hotels far from boisterous protest marches through the streets of this Old World city of cobblestone streets and French architecture.

A 2.5-mile fence of concrete blocks and chain link, plus thousands of Royal Canadian Mounted Police, kept a small pocket of self-described anarchists well beyond range of Bush. He was never overpowered by blinding clouds of tear gas, like many others on both sides of the so-called “Wall of Shame,” built just for the three-day summit. The Mounties even escorted the summit leaders into the formal dinner Saturday night.

So the dominant image here was not of a president building rapport with regional allies or taking the initiative, but of tear gas and demonstrators taking the initiative away. Television pictures showed the Western Hemisphere’s leaders just “standing around,” said Marlin Fitzwater, a spokesman for the Reagan and earlier Bush administrations.

“He doesn’t walk in with maybe 10 proposals and they’re all passed. This is about negotiating for five or 10 years. So the only way you have [to judge his work] is visual, and the visuals are overwhelmed by the tear gas,” Fitzwater said.

Bush also sometimes seemed rather tentative, even though every minute of the summit was well scripted. When he stood for a photograph with Prime Minister Jean Chretien, the press had to shout to him to shake the Canadian leader’s outstretched hand.

And sometimes he seemed a little undiplomatic. Like a new kid declaring who would be his best friend, Bush announced Saturday, during the first working session with all 34 leaders in attendance, that his first official state dinner will be for Mexican President Vicente Fox--thus causing a bit of embarrassment for his Canadian host and other neighbors. And the dinner is not scheduled until next fall.

But the bar was set fairly low for Bush’s first outing.

“You’re not getting any sense of here’s a guy out leading the world. But you also don’t get a sense that he doesn’t know what he’s doing or that he’s flapping in the wind,” Nofziger said.

Bush has the same advantage that Reagan had, according to Nofziger.

“If he does well, it’s better than a lot of people expect,” he said. “And if he doesn’t do well, it’s no worse than a lot of people expect.”