Republican White House hopefuls have long treated London as a useful backdrop. Ronald Reagan met Margaret Thatcher three times there before he won his party’s nomination (and before she had moved into Downing Street). But this time the parade of aspirants is faster and thicker than before.
Staging a London photo-op conveys two messages — it shows foreign policy credentials and asserts the value of old alliances. Both are qualities President Barack Obama supposedly lacks. Visiting the UK is shorthand for a resurgent post-Obama America.
In practice, however, London-as-prop is only highlighting the dearth of thinking on both sides of the Atlantic. Not only are many such trips miscuing. They are anything but forward-looking.
The latest was Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin. Last week he met David Cameron, the British prime minister, and paid homage at the Churchill war rooms. The effect was marred by his refusal to discuss foreign policy at Chatham House — Britain’s most venerable podium for giving speeches about, um, foreign policy.
Instead he focused on Wisconsin’s dairy products. In spite of his audience, he refused to endorse the story of evolution. His visit followed that of Chris Christie, the ebullient governor of New Jersey, who in London cast doubt on the need for parents to vaccinate their children. He too had a photo-op with Cameron and refused to take foreign policy questions.
In December, it was Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and before that, Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana. Other recent visits include Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, and Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida.
The next is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who will arrive in London at the start of a tour of evangelist pastors that will take in the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher (Grantham), Pope John Paul II (Poland) and Ronald Reagan (Illinois).
The only remaining big names are Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, and Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator. Doubtless they too will meet the cast of Downton Abbey — sorry, Downing Street — and visit the Churchill and Thatcher sites. But their itinerary is double-edged.
Exposing a candidate’s ignorance
The biggest danger is that such trips will only expose a candidate’s ignorance, which defeats the purpose. That is why they are often limited to photo-ops and private meetings.
When visiting candidates choose to give speeches, they need to be careful. In January, Jindal gave an address about Daesh (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in which he repeated the myth that there were “no-go” areas for non-Muslims in large UK cities like Birmingham. The previous week, Cameron had dismissed a US pundit who had made the same claim on Fox News as a “complete idiot”.
Like many visiting US conservatives, Jindal gave his speech at the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a UK think-tank named after Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, the former US senator, who many see as the father of neoconservatism.
In this respect, the UK is not so much a cosmopolitan backdrop as a provincial one. HJS was founded in 2005, two years after the disastrous invasion of Iraq, which is the think-tank equivalent of the miniskirt arriving in New Zealand in the 1970s.
Given the choice it would be better to talk about cheese products at Chatham House.
Another danger is that you will inadvertently offend the locals, who are not nearly as polite as legend has it. Nor do they observe the US rule that politics stops at the water’s edge.
During the US general election in 2012, Mitt Romney was ridiculed after hinting that London was unprepared for the Olympics. Cameron pointed out that it was far harder to stage events in London than the “middle of nowhere”, an unsubtle reminder that Romney had boasted about having turned around the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. Boris Johnson delivered his own veiled insult by pretending he had never heard of Romney.
London’s mayor appears to have a taste for transatlantic digs. Last week he said Jindal’s reference to Muslim-only areas was “complete nonsense”.
Yet they keep coming back for more. There are two reasons for this.
First, how many other nuclear powers would give the governors of small rural states face-time with their heads of government? Cameron will see you now. President Xi Jinping — and Francois Hollande for that matter — will not.
Lucrative fundraisers
Given Britain’s emphasis on the “special relationship”, Cameron has little to lose. At worst he has wasted half an hour. At best he is owed a favour by the next US president. Of course, he might no longer be prime minister after the UK election in May.
Second, they tend to raise a lot of money. Romney’s allegedly disastrous London trip netted him $2 million (Dh7.34 million) from a fundraising dinner with the UK branch of Republicans Abroad — the wealthiest of its chapters because it includes the City of London.
Yet there is something lazy about London’s place on the itinerary. It is true that other countries — notably Israel and sometimes Germany — also feature. But London is automatic.
The next president will inherit a very different world to that bequeathed by George W Bush. It will be multipolar and complicated.
Countries like China and India are shaping events. It would be encouraging were New Delhi and Beijing occasionally to make it on to the itinerary.
— Financial Times
