I was amused by this headline in The Herald yesterday:
WikiLeaks: PM plays power games with President Obama
Wow! Sounds exciting doesn’t it? Power games! With Obama!! So what’s the story???
US Embassy staff were pressured to set a date for Prime Minister John Key to meet President Barack Obama – because media had already been told the meeting was on. …
The cable shows Key pushing for a firm meeting date with Obama after speaking with him at the 2009 APEC meeting in Singapore. “Key said the exchanges resulted in him briefing the press in a certain way about the `invitation’, which he said he would not have done if he had thought the offer were actually more casual and indefinite.
“Expectations in NZ were set, Key said, and the matter potentially could turn into a political embarrassment for him. Key noted that his June schedule was `still empty’.”
“Still empty” — how fitting. Stuff supplies more details:
Mr Key’s personal pitch is noted in the cable as a measure of the depth of New Zealand’s concern about the issue; it was the first time he had personally raised the issue himself, preferring previously to leave the discussions to Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully and his officials. …
The cable tallies with private briefings to journalists by senior National sources at the time; they were expecting Mr Key to make a separate visit to Washington sometime in the first half of the year. That appears to have been a factor in rising embarrassment that the trip had not come off, with Mr Key implying that he had been led astray by the Americans. …
The cable concludes: ” The manner in which PM Key pitched the bilateral visit indicated to the Ambassador that nailing down a June visit is of intense importance to Key.” …
While Prime Minister Helen Clark visited the White House twice, it has been decades since a National leader did so.
Reading these accounts I can’t help but think that the Herald headline tends to be a rather, shall we say “generous” interpretation of events. “Power games”? Key went personally begging for a photo op but the President of the US was too busy doing stuff that mattered. Yeah, I think I could have written a much more accurate headline for the piece. I’m sure you can too…
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