When he visited Europe, Bush wanted to do the same. Before his recent "torturers a-go-go" tour of Europe, the Bush Junta had declared that a "town hall" style meeting was to be the cornerstone of the brief trip to Germany in an attempt to get in touch with the German people to convince them of his policies.
Strangely, once in Germany the town hall meeting disappeared off the agenda. It had been cancelled, without any official explanation. Scheduling reasons were hinted at but another explanation seems likely. The White House simply concluded that an uncontrolled encounter with the German public would be too unpredictable.
The Bush Junta wanted to a repeat of the rules applied to Condi Rice's meeting with students at Paris's Institute of Political Sciences. There Rice's staff insisted on screening and approving the questions to be asked by students. The Germans, however, insisted that a free forum should be exactly that. Germany's Ambassador to the United States said that "we told them, don't get upset with us if they ask angry questions." So instead of the town hall meeting, Bush meet with a group of around 20 so-called "young leaders" who had been handpicked by several US organizations with offices in Germany.
Obviously this elite guest list ensured that Bush found the chat as pleasant as his American "town hall" meetings. Whether we got the chance to experience such awesome powers of mind-reading as shown in this spontaneous, unscripted (and all too real) exchange is currently unknown:
MS. STONE: I would like to introduce my mom. This is my mother, Rhoda Stone. And she is grandmother of three, and originally from Helsinki, Finland, and has been here over 40 years.
THE PRESIDENT: Fantastic. Same age as my mother.
MS. STONE: Just turned 80.