Big Night In

Bushes Set the Table for a Rare Treat: An Official Dinner

There's a big black-tie dinner at the White House tonight. President Bush will don a tuxedo and might even stay up past 10. This is, as they say in Texas, rarer than hen's teeth.

The dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (technically an "official" instead of "state" dinner because Singh is head of government but not the state) is notable as one of the few grand parties of this administration. The White House has hosted only four state dinners since Bush took office in 2001; the last one was held in October 2003 for the president of Kenya. It's a big deal for India, and for the White House.

"The symbolic and the diplomatic importance of an event like this is inversely proportional to the frequency," says former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott. "The less often they happen, the more important they are."

State dinners were traditionally the most sought-after invitation in Washington, the gold-plated stamp of diplomatic and social approval. World leaders routinely got the red-carpet treatment until 2001, when Bush began substituting informal lunches for black-tie dinners. The first lady hinted earlier this year that she intended to host more stately events during the second term and hired a new social secretary (but no new chef yet). But nothing has changed, and if the next four years look anything like the past four years, formal entertaining at this White House is a thing of the past.

How much this matters to anyone but Washington arrivistes is debatable. From a foreign-policy standpoint, the paucity of state dinners raises their value but slights many world leaders. "It's unfortunate that they're not doing more of them," says Ed Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation. "It's kind of a lost opportunity."

The other question is access to the White House. The guest lists for official state events are typically released to the public. Because this president entertains officially so infrequently, little is known about who enjoys his private hospitality at off-the-record, behind-closed-doors events.

"Back in the years of Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton, I was a religious reader of the guest lists of state and other White House dinners," says American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein. "It was a great source of lots of different kind of gossip."

Analyzing the list -- who's in, who's out -- was an important way of figuring out the priorities of the administration."

The only lists coming out of the White House these days are announcements of world leaders dropping by for a quick chat or, if they're lucky, lunch. This month Bush squeezed in Kuwait's and Singapore's prime ministers before and after his trip to the G8 summit in Scotland. Today, Singh gets the royal treatment, then it's back to short visits: tomorrow with Australia's prime minister and next week with Pakistan's prime minister.

Bush kicked off his post-inaugural diplomacy Feb. 9 with Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski before heading off to Europe for a NATO summit, according to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who keeps a day-to-day log of Bush's schedule listing every world leader he meets with and where. Bush returned to Washington just in time to host the nation's governors at what he called "our first state dinner of my second term." Despite a busy travel schedule in the spring, the president welcomed more than 30 world leaders to the White House for short meetings and photo ops.

This is Bush's no-frills diplomacy: No fuss, no muss, just a highly efficient form of revolving door to the Oval Office. When British Prime Minister Tony Blair came to Washington last month, he used an informal, private dinner with the president to lobby for the inclusion of China and India in an emissions agreement.

"The word is out that what you get from the White House these days is a different style," says Roland Flamini, UPI chief international correspondent. The message it sends is, " 'We're a working White House. We're here to do the country's business. We're not here to have fancy dinners.' My impression is that 'fancy' is a derogatory term in the Bush administration."