Posted on 06/29/2005 4:41:07 PM PDT by quidnunc
Washington – President Bush will be celebrating his 59th birthday in Scotland next Wednesday, the first US President to land north of the border since Eisenhower.
But he will not be using the occasion to turn native. Asked if he was tempted to try haggis, he was blunt. “Yes, haggis, I was briefed on haggis . . . No. Generally, on your birthday, my mother used to say, ‘What do you want to eat?’ and I don’t ever remember saying, ‘Haggis, Mum’.”
Nor did he plan to don a kilt. When the Queen held a Buckingham Palace banquet in Mr Bush’s honour during his 2003 State visit, an old Scottish friend, Billy Gammell, a former Scotland rugby international who heads an oil and gas exploration company, had been invited.
“Gammell showed up in his kilt. I said, ‘Look buddy, you can wear your kilt, but I’m not going to wear one’.” Mr Bush said he had fond memories of Scotland, which he visited to stay with the Gammells.
Despite staying at a famous golf course, Mr Bush said he feared there would be no time for a game. But he hoped to walk the links with wife, Laura. “Maybe she and I can walk a round together, holding hands in the Scottish mist.”
There has probably never been a president, there may not have been a human being, who observes punctuality with the sort of fanaticism that President George W. Bush brings to every aspect of his life.
If you are on time for a meeting with the President you are late, we were told as we prepared for our interview in the Oval Office yesterday to preview the G8 summit at Gleneagles next week.
Sure enough, a full nine minutes before the allotted time for our appointment, the door of the most famous room in the world opens and a genial President steps forward to greet us.
In person Mr Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.
The obligatory trip round the Oval Office is now so much of a ritual that he approaches it with the wry, self-mocking tone of an ersatz tour guide.
It’s an executive office, he points out, a place where decisions are made. “So the first decision I had to make was what colour the rug should be.”
The next thing he learnt about the presidency, he says, is the importance of delegating: “So I asked Laura to design it.”
It is, he notes, a soft yellow, like the radiance of the rising Sun. “It says an optimistic person works here.”
His mood alters, though, as he turns from the brilliantine carpet to the brooding figures that adorn his walls — great war leaders in whom he obviously seeks inspiration. Abraham Lincoln looks down from his wall beside the main entrance. On the other side of the room a bust of Winston Churchill, a personal gift of Tony Blair to the current occupant, stares across at today’s successor to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Mr Bush added a bust of President Eisenhower. It sits to the left of his desk, made from the timbers of HMS Resolute, a Victorian transport ship, another gift from the British. You’re probably the only people in here for whom I don’t need to explain what ‘HMS’ means,” he says. “My Texas friends have no idea what I’m talking about when I tell them.”
As expansive as he is, Mr Bush can’t help betraying a faint irritation at the intrusiveness of the modern media, with a reference to a famous brief medical emergency from a couple of years ago.
He points out the door in the well of the presidential desk, placed there by President Roosevelt to hide the fact that he spent his presidency in a wheelchair. “FDR was in a wheelchair and nobody knows. I choke on a pretzel and the whole world gets to hear about it.”
-snip-
(Gerard Baker in The Times, June 30, 2005)
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I wouldn't mind wearing a kilt, but despite being maybe 98% Scottish, I would not ever, no way, eat haggis.
Oh wear a kilt, ya girl.
Of course, I'll be at the Highland Games in NC in a week. Slainte!
I didn't hear the interview, but I'm pretty certain that he didn't say 'Mum'
I'm half Scot, but I canna stand the 'pipes. As I tell me bairns, "Bagpipes are best appreciated from a distance. The width of the Atlantic Ocean is just about right."
I will do and have done both !
I imagine if I grew up eating it, it would be fine and probably nothing wrong with the taste, but just knowing what it is made from is enough to prevent it's consumption.
I also tried it, but only a small bite because I knew what was in it.
Won't try it again.
Bet he won't be tossing any kabers, either.
Came with a side of tatties and neeps, I'll wager.
Just too much traffic and too many people now.
Yes to the kilt (GWB would look GREAT in one!), but a hearty No, No, NOOOOO! to the haggis.
Regards,
PS: I really do wish he'd go ahead an wear it. Men look very attractive in them, IMO.
I'm half Scot, but I canna stand the 'pipes
What a shame to have your heart for scotland bred out of you
I like very very hard rock and roll but when it comes to the pipes my heart goes home to Scotland . it can swing a whole range of emotions in me i don't usually show.
No sides, if I recall. Just one big honkin slice of haggis.
That assumes one has any faith left to be shaken.
What's under the kilt?
Somewhere in all that French and Spanish DNA I MUST have a mote of Scot in me, because I LOVE the pipes! I cry my eyes out when I hear 'Amazing Grace', and I could take on the world when I hear ' Scotland the Brave'.
Have a tape of the Black Watch pipers going at full blast right now! THRILLING!
And while I think Dubya would have the legs for a kilt, he sure does do a flight suit proud!
He once told me what it is that makes people like them but I can't remember what he said, although it was about the sound.
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