The Blair Bush Project

President Bush's most loyal and long-suffering ally comes calling today. Badly battered in his last election due to his unwavering support for Bush and the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair is hoping for a little payback.

Blair has newly staked his reputation in advancing a modern Marshall Plan for Africa, which calls for industrialized countries to massively increase aid and write off many debts.

He is also hoping to rally the heads of the G8 countries to fight global warming when they gather in Scotland in July.

But to accomplish his goals, Blair needs to work Bush off of his previously expressed resistance on both those counts -- and that's highly improbable.

Bush and Blair will appear in a joint press conference this afternoon at 4:45 p.m. EDT. Don't expect much of the underlying tension to be apparent, however, as both leaders will likely praise each other to the skies and make a big fuss over Blair's consolation prize: A U.S. commitment to providing $674 million for famine relief in Africa, cobbled together from already-approved appropriations.

At their last joint press conference, in November , a reporter asked Bush: "The Prime Minister is sometimes, perhaps unfairly, characterized in Britain as your 'poodle.' I was wondering if that's the way you may see your relationship?"

Blair jumped in: "Don't answer 'yes' to that question. If you do, I would be -- (laughter.) That would be difficult."

The fitting follow-up question today would be: "Mr. Blair: Are you getting the reward you think you deserve? Or are you just getting scraps?"

Another Opportune Question

Richard W. Stevenson writes in the New York Times: "The meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair will cover a broad array of topics, including Iraq. The leaders are expected to reiterate their commitment to bring stability to Iraq in the face of pressures in both of their countries to begin bringing troops home, officials said.

"It will be the first meeting between them since the disclosure last month of a memo written by a foreign policy aide to Mr. Blair in 2002 that reported, based on a visit to Washington by a top British intelligence official, that the White House was fixing its 'intelligence and facts' about the threat from Saddam Hussein 'around the policy' of removing him from power through military action."

One issue that Bush -- and Blair -- should be questioned about is the Downing Street Memo in which the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency asserted that the White House was already set on invading Iraq in July 2002. See my May 17 column for the background.

Any reporter asking about the memo could make an easy grand, being offered by a group of liberal Web activists.