White House photo by Eric Draper
George W. Bush and Bob Geldof aboard Air Force One en route to Ghana, Africa, Feb. 19, 2008

Geldof and Bush: Diary From the Road, by Bob Geldof in Time.

Former Boomtown Rat and Live Aid organizer Geldof is officially writing about President Bush as they travel on Air Force One to Ghana. The story begins,

I gave the President my book. He raised an eyebrow. "Who wrote this for ya, Geldof?" he said without looking up from the cover. Very dry. "Who will you get to read it for you, Mr. President?" I replied. No response.

But his point is very different:

The Bush regime has been divisive — but not in Africa. I read it has been incompetent — but not in Africa. It has created bitterness — but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives.

Bob Geldof as Pink, in Pink Floyd The Wall.

The fact- and opinion-filled piece is a remarkable first-person account of what must have been a genuinely weird encounter, given the author's ambivalence about his subject. The Irish-born Geldof has found the "compassionate conservative" of Bush's 2000 campaign, and calls out how he has compartmentalized it:

At one point I suggest that he will never be given credit for good policies, like those here in Africa, because many people view him "as a walking crime against humanity." He looks very hurt by that. And I'm sorry I said it, because he's a very likable fellow

It's not all policy discussion. There is a bit about how the laundry gets done on Air Force One, and the only scene actually set in Ghana -- since this is a profile of the president, not an account of their trip -- includes this odd bit:

At a lunch for Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana... One woman tells how six months previously, she was bitten by a cobra and rushed to hospital. As she was passing out, she tells the President, "that little voice whispered to me, 'You'll be all right,' and I was." She pauses, and says meaningfully to him: "You know that little voice, I think?" "Not really," Bush says drily. "I've never been bitten by a cobra."

Geldof does not record whether the President was backing away slowly as he said this.

Ominous postscript: Soaring Food Prices Putting U.S. Emergency Aid in Peril. WaPo.