Justin Webb's America

Travel styles

• Justin Webb
• 28 Nov 07, 11:08 PM GMT

I finally got on my plane to London and found myself face-to-face with the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, returning from his time at the Annapolis Middle East shindig, his ministerial red box in the locker above him.

How wonderful and democratic and low-key and BRITISH it is that this is how Foreign Secretaries travel! I must admit I felt a real British pride as we hobbled late into London Heathrow and were forced to wait half an hour on the tarmac for a place to be found to park the plane... and all these inconveniences were suffered by all of us together, albeit at different ends of the plane - like the Royal Family staying in London during the Blitz.

I am a great admirer of the White House and State Department travel arrangements - I love it that they have big planes and they bring all their own fuel and they close down airspace and all the rest of it. I particularly like the US arrangement of journalists travelling with the pool not having to show passports to any foreigners on any occasion.

But there is still room for the low-key British way of doing things.

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One tough VP

• Justin Webb
• 28 Nov 07, 08:38 AM GMT

Dick Cheney's latest brush with ill-health reminds us all that he is plainly made of something very tough. Physically and mentally he is hard. He can overcome adversity.

But he does not win every battle: I was talking the other day to a former senior adviser of his about the Annapolis Middle East talks - a process the adviser thinks is barmy and merely encourages radicalisation and posturing, delaying peace. The adviser preferred secret deals, tacit understandings, unpublicised channels. He could almost have been Dick himself (he was not, I hasten to add) - but the Annapolis push proves that the VP is not running the Bush show at the moment.

Should he be there at all though?

I am writing this at Dulles airport on my way for a brief trip to London to help arrange the BBC's coverage of the 2008 election and take part in some broadcast discussions about the way the land lies. I remember telling one of those panels a year ago that Dick Cheney might well resign in 2007 and be replaced by an anointed candidate around whom the Republicans could unite as their man for 2008. The Foreign Editor, Jon Williams, rang me afterwards to see if I was feeling all right...

So I was wrong. But the Republican strategist who suggested the idea to me (none of my predictions are my own, though I will pretend they are if they ever come true) had in mind the elevation of one Rudy Giuliani to the post of VP.

And now, frankly, the idea really does look to have been rather inspired. Giuliani's status could have been enhanced by the job and the issues about his private life set aside by a period at the helm or close to it. And yet it was not to be; partly because the Bushies do not like Giuliani, partly because Giuliani himself might have fancied his chances untethered to a sinking ship (wrongly I think), and mostly - I guess - because of that Cheney toughness, that would have taken hold of the idea and throttled it.

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