I was traveling with the Secretary of State, and he was a fairly well known commodity on the world stage. He had become very high profile back during the Gulf War, and had managed to avoid stepping on his dick in the ten years since then. In most foreign capitals he was much better known than I was. Marilyn and I were both going, and the kids were staying home. Colin's wife, Alma, was also traveling with us.
I was fairly current on what our history was with each country, including what had been planned under President Bush. That didn't mean I agreed with his plans. In particular, I was less than thrilled with his antagonistic view and tone concerning Russia. There were a bunch of people who longed for the good old days of the Cold War, when we only had one enemy, the dirty Commies. They were evil people you could point to and say were bad. Since a lot of the more hard core neo-conservatives dated back to the Reagan and Bush 41 years, when the 'Evil Empire' was given its nickname, they still thought that way. It was easy to point at Russia; it wasn't so easy to point at radical Islamic terrorists.
I had argued this out with both Bush and Cheney. We had spent fifty years in a European-centric world view. Certainly the army I had served in was all about fighting the Soviets. The Russians were going to flood the Fulda Gap with T-72s and BMPs, and the 82nd was going to be dropped in to stop them. That was the theory, in any case. In reality, for fifty years the Russians never attacked in Europe, and the 82nd went everywhere but Europe! However, World War II had ended in 1945, and 56 years later, we still had armored units facing Eastern Europe, even though the Soviet Union had collapsed 12 years earlier. Worse, nobody seemed to think this was a strange idea! The Russians couldn't successfully invade their refrigerator right now, let alone a foreign country. Their tanks were rusting to pieces in the fields, they didn't have the money to pay for gas to fly their planes, and their ships and subs were being slowly sold to other countries, at least the ones that hadn't rusted out to the point they sank at the docks.
It wasn't helping that Vladimir Putin was taking a more international stand than his predecessor. Boris Yeltsin had been almost exclusively focused on internal Kremlin politics and policies. Putin had a much firmer hold on power in Russia, and was able to focus on foreign affairs. He had a very good grasp on the fact that Russia was in the crosshairs of more than a few Islamic radicals, and it was a lot easier to get to Russia than it was to get to America. They had been fighting in Chechnya and Dagestan for most of the last decade. Meanwhile the neocons were yapping about the need to strengthen NATO by admitting former Soviet Bloc client states, and moving anti-ballistic missiles and armed forces closer to the Russian borders. If nothing else, I needed to ratchet down the nonsense. We could start by at least being a lot politer to each other.
Powell didn't agree with me completely. He still had a European focus, though that had changed somewhat. Like me, however, he was not possessed of an overwhelming desire to get pushy with the Russians. I had a much more realpolitik view of the world. I had to live with the world as it really was, and didn't have a burning desire to replace it with something else, especially something that wouldn't work. I remembered how on my first trip through, the Bush crew had allied themselves with the Republic of Georgia, and then looked like they were pulling their puds when the Russians invaded in 2008 and gave them a quick spanking. The entire world knew we weren't going to have a nuclear confrontation over Georgia, but we certainly managed to look stupid during the process. The harsh truth was that most of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus were in the Russian sphere of influence, just like the Western Hemisphere was in ours. There was no need to get pissy about it.
So the plan was to visit England and France and meet and greet the powers that be, go on to Moscow and tone down the rhetoric with Putin, and then head to Israel. Sharon had invited me twice so far. He was on the front lines, so to speak, and dealt with the crazies on a daily basis. I wanted to ramp up our intelligence capabilities, and he wanted some money for weapons and for us to shut up about settlements and other shit. We basically just needed to do business, and I had spent a number of years doing business. We could get along.
Great Britain and France were the first two stops. In some ways they were the easiest and most ornamental. Tony Blair was the British Prime Minister, and I was now his third American President to deal with. He was Labour Party, which was closer in sympathies to the Democrats than the Republicans, but they ran a Parliamentary system in any case. Most importantly, unless the Americans got really stupid and crazy (and sometimes even if they did), the British would back us up.
The French were a different matter. There was a real love-hate relationship there, and they tended to do things their own way and be rude about it in the process. Jacques Chirac was the President, and I was his third American President as well. In some ways I didn't really need to go to Paris, but Marilyn made some comments about visiting there when she was in high school, and we had never gone before. Maybe I could get a few minutes and take her to see the Eiffel Tower.
This was really our first trip to anyplace exotic for political reasons. Marilyn and I had flown together around the country during the election and before, when I was in business. As the Vice President I was mostly sent to the drearier parts of the planet as punishment for being outspoken, and Marilyn stayed home for those trips. I offered to let her stay home rather than meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, and was promptly asked, "If I sue you for divorce, do I get to keep the White House?" Frank and Ari both heard her ask that and both just about rolled on the floor laughing.
It's a seven hour flight from D.C. to London, but you are also traveling east five time zones, so it actually takes twelve hours to get there. Before we left, I saw John McCain, now officially sworn in as Vice President, and asked him not to start any nuclear wars without me. He gave me an evil laugh and sent me off. We left Andrews on Wednesday, November 7, at 8:30 PM, and landed at Heathrow the next morning at 8:30 AM on Thursday the 8th. One nice feature was that the President and First Lady have their own suite in the nose of the plane. Colin and Alma would catch a few winks in some really nice first class seats that leaned way back, but it still wasn't the same as a bed. I teased Marilyn about that. We hadn't fooled around on an airplane since I began using security details back when I got into Congress. I don't think we slept more than five or six hours, but it beat an airliner seat all to hell. We were even able to take showers and clean up before changing for landing.
It was more than a little weird leaving Air Force One at Heathrow. The only other time I had flown in the plane was as the Acting President when I flew to New York right after 9-11. There had been zero pomp and circumstance involved, and I had traveled with just a few people. We had an emergency and decorum be damned. We flew in, went down the stairs, and moved out.
Now it was nothing but pomp and circumstance! According to the briefing paper I was given, Prince Charles was standing in for his mother the Queen, and would greet us at the airport. I would review some ceremonial troops, and then we would be taken to the Hyatt Regency London, where we were staying. We would freshen up and settle in, and then Marilyn and I would split up. I would meet with Prime Minister Blair while Marilyn was taken on a tour of London and a visit to an elementary school. Somebody had figured out that my wife had a degree in teaching, even if she had never taught a day in her life.
The one thing I really wished we had kept when we threw the Brits out all those years ago was a separate Head of State. In Britain the Queen was the Head of State, while the Prime Minister was the Head of Government. This is very common in parliamentary systems. The Queen gets a nice paycheck and has to deal with all the ceremony. The Prime Minister doesn't have to do that stuff. I was constantly switching back and forth between running a country and shaking hands. It was not uncommon to leave a budget meeting and have to congratulate the top selling Girl Scout cookie salesperson who had won a trip to Washington, go back to a different budget meeting, get yanked out to meet and greet the Wisconsin Dairy Princess, and then head off to meet the Joint Chiefs of Staff.