Sea Island singers serenade Summit Group in Gullah

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the NYTimes,  June 10, 2004

World Leaders Get a Glimpse of America's High Life
By DAVID E. SANGER and RICHARD W. STEVENSON

SEA ISLAND, Ga., June 9 - Ronald Reagan wanted to show off America's
colonial traditions, so he held the 1983 summit meeting of leading
industrial nations in Williamsburg, Va., on the streets Jefferson once
walked. Seven years later, George H. W. Bush took his counterparts to
noisy Houston, and Bill Clinton tried Denver to give the world a mile-high
view of the booming American West and American Indian tradition.

But when President Bush needed a place to repair alliances that have been
strained to the maximum degree, he chose this playground of the Southern
rich, with its glorious "cottages" and expensive golf resorts. Sea Island
is part of a chain of barrier islands with a rich history as a place where
freed slaves established themselves as landowners after the Civil War.
These days it is not much of a place to experience average America, but it
is a fine locale to shut out the rest of the world, view conspicuous
architectural consumption and walk beaches that have little or no public
access.

The islands also gave birth to Gullah, the English dialect developed by
African slaves, and at the opening dinner on Tuesday night, a group of Sea
Island singers entertained the leaders in that rapidly vanishing language.

It may be hot and steamy, but the place runs deep in the hearts of the
Bush family. President Bush, making small talk with a reporter on
Wednesday as he waited for the arrival of leaders from the Middle East and
Turkey, said he had never been here before but that his mother and father
had. "Honeymoon," he said, smiling, adding that he thought they had been
back since. And it was the perfect place for Mr. Bush to take his new
21-gear mountain bike with "the wide tires," he reported after an early
morning spin around the golf course. ("Good way to get the heart rate up,"
he said.)

Politicos could argue that any place that oozes privilege, elitism and
championship golf should be avoided during an election year. But what is
good for honeymoons turned out to be good for security. The Secret Service
shut down the entire island, erecting fences by the causeway, patrolling
the coast with Navy and Coast Guard vessels and keeping military jets
overhead. Residents were allowed to stay as long as they got
security-clearance cards, but the abundance of fabulous summer homes meant
plenty of places to rent for leaders, staff members and even reporters.

A confession: the print "pool" reporters - one from a newspaper, one from
a magazine - luxuriated in their own seven-bedroom house, fully equipped
with a formal library, a sunroom with a jukebox, and, true to their duty,
a small pool. Re-elected or not, this is Mr. Bush's one and only
opportunity to act as host; America's turn does not come around again for
another eight years.

Limited Horsepower

If environmentalists could have gotten onto Sea Island this week - and
they couldn't - their hearts might have been warmed by sight of the
world's most powerful leaders tooling around in nonpolluting golf carts.
In fact, this was the golf cart summit meeting. When President Bush stood
at the entrance of the local beach club on Wednesday to greet the leaders,
there were no motorcades of bulletproof black limousines. Instead, most of
the leaders drove past the manicured lawns in their own little carts,
popping out to shake hands. But there were definite stylistic differences.

Mr. Bush seemed to love cruising about in a red-white-and-blue number, one
that his staff boasted could hit 25 miles an hour. Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder of Germany, eager throughout this meeting to repair a wounded
relationship, was another cart enthusiast, with a golf shirt to match.
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain rode for a while, then walked. But
the picture of the day came after lunch with Middle Eastern leaders.  Mr.
Bush bundled the new president of Iraq, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, into his
high-speed cart and zipped off, the sheik's headdress flying in the wind.
Mr. Bush was waving to the photographers, clearly enjoying the freedom.
The new Iraqi president was holding on for dear life, a metaphor, one
administration official later acknowledged, for his new job.

Flirtation with Openness

When it comes to journalists, the Bush administration does not have an
open-door policy. White House reporters frequently despair of having their
telephone calls returned by administration officials, senior or otherwise,
and arranging sit-down interviews with crucial policy makers can require
lengthy negotiation. On trips outside of Washington, reporters can go days
without setting eyes on any of Mr. Bush's top aides, who keep well away
from anyone who might ask an awkward or even routine question.

So imagine the surprise of the White House press corps when it arrived in
Georgia for the summit meeting and found that the administration was
offering up a veritable buffet of officials for interviews. By e-mail,
reporters were invited to go online to request interviews with many of the
administration's most senior policy makers.

To some degree, the White House delivered. John R. Bolton, the under
secretary of state for arms control and international security, gave
interviews to many news organizations, and Condoleezza Rice, the national
security adviser, gave some television interviews. All five television
networks carried interviews on Wednesday morning with Laura Bush. Alas, a
number of the other officials appeared before reporters only on the
condition, imposed by the White House, that they not be identified by
name. Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, never appeared
before the vast majority of journalists, who never got any closer to the
summit than the International Media Center in Savannah, 80 miles away, but
he did stop by the White House press room on Sea Island, giving shoulder
and neck massages to reporters.

Naturally, correspondents more accustomed to the brush-off than a massage,
viewed the outbreak of openness with skepticism if not cynicism. Asked at
a news briefing if the officials were being made available because it was
a good moment for Mr. Bush on Iraq, Jim Wilkinson, the head of
communications for the National Security Council, replied, "We're a host
of the summit, and we have thousands of reporters here, many from the
international community, and we feel a special responsibility to try to
ensure as much access as possible to as many reporters as possible, with
subject-matter experts."

There was no word on whether that policy will be applied when Mr. Bush and
his entourage return to Washington.