On the other hand, there was the president suggesting Queen Elizabeth was over 230 years old.
The president's slip of the tongue during welcoming speeches was inadvertent, of course, and quickly smoothed over with humor. But it wasn't exactly the flawless effort Bush had hoped would erase memories of the "talking hat" episode during the queen's last U.S. visit. (In 1991, during Bush's father's administration, a too-tall lectern left the audience able to see only the queen's hat behind microphones.)
Give or take a couple of centuries. The queen, a sprightly 81, gave an embarrassed Bush a gracious nod after he suggested she had celebrated the United States' founding in 1776. He meant to say she had attended 1976 bicentennial festivities.
"She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child," the president quipped, earning a reserved chuckle from his guest.
Later, Laura Bush made her own minor calendar mistake. She flubbed the year that she and her husband attended the state dinner hosted by President George H.W. Bush in honor of the queen, saying it was in 1993.
The president and the queen took markedly different approaches to their formal remarks.
Bush focused on the partnership between the United States and Britain in Iraq and against terrorism. In just four minutes, he mentioned "freedom" and "liberty" seven times. "Your majesty, I appreciate your leadership during these times of danger and decision," he said.
By contrast, the queen said her fifth journey to the United States was an occasion to "step back from our current preoccupations."
In the leaders' toasts at dinner, they took opposite tacks. Bush praised her for a reign that has "deepened our friendship and strengthened our alliance," while the British monarch talked of the threat of terror, problems like climate change and the likelihood of occasional disagreement between allies.
"Ours is a partnership always to be reckoned with in the defense of freedom and the spread of prosperity," she said.
Earlier gaffes aside, the day had the White House at its freshly painted best and brought excitement inside and outside its gates.
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Unless one was not reading the unwritten story and not understanding the intention of the article concerning Bush and the Queen, it hasn't made any sense - the Queen, above the fray, disinterested in the smallness or pettiness of Bush, above the gaffes said by Laura and George, the Queen, not the least bit personally inclined toward this rough and unsuited man.
Except for one small thing ...
Mr Bush is the first President to be hosted at the Royal residence since Ronald Regan was pictured riding at Windsor with the Queen in June 1982.
Copyright © 2008 AP
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! All rights reserved.
If she didn't like him, she would have kept him at Buckingham Palace, where Clinton stayed, and not had him go to her private residence, where she and her family go.
: )
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