More Visitors

You all know, the Embassy gets a lot of VIP visitors some big and some little. Recently, I had Senator Kerry who used to be big but is now able to sit in an airport VIP lounge with me totally undisturbed by the three European journalists also hanging out in the lounge.

More recently, I was in charge of Senator Obama’s visit. Hence the near silence on this blog, on emails and on the phone. Speaking of phones our Vonage is working again so if you have our NJ 609 number – it and the voicemail should work.

Anyway, Senator Obama…. No, I didn’t get a picture with him. No one here did except the Charge’ (fancy French word for most senior person in Embassy when the Ambassador is not in-country). The visit was crazy. He was coming from Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq where he did not travel with campaign staff or the press so that when he landed here in Amman his campaign plane (and staffers and press) were here too demanding attention.

I did take some pictures of the visit which I will try to post tonight. I did get some decent pictures of the Senator and of the Ospreys he and Senators Reed and Hagel flew in on. I also got a picture with Senators Reed and Hagel both of whom are theoretically being considered for the VP slot.

The visit was exhausting and complicated but there were some cool things about it:

1. I got to work closely with the Palace. The great thing about a Kingdom is that when you need to get things done, it seems like the Palace can do anything. For the past two weeks, I had a member of the Royal Family (no one you have heard of) who was assigned to this visit on speed dial. I did ask him for help getting an airplane part through customs but this seems like kind of a boring use of one’s (very temporary) access to power.

2. I also got to get caught up with an old friend who is working for the campaign and was in town.

3. I got to eat dinner in the Palace. I didn’t eat anywhere near Their Majesties but I still got some delicious lamb chops.

4. I had an interesting conversation with some journalists on the plane who said that especially the foreign media is really, really interested in Sen. Obama and will print whatever their news services publish. Indeed, this visit had a lot more journalists in-town than last spring’s visit by Senator McCain.