Touching times for Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama

JULIA Gillard and Barack Obama are a touchy pairing. Their hands, like disembodied life forms, seek out the other’s shoulders and backs.

When such targets are out of reach, digits settle on forearms or the nearest available body part.
Obama constantly bares his American teeth.
His smile alone could power a Third World country.
Gillard blushes, like a high school girl who has, finally, after much bedroom plotting, captured the gaze of the football captain.
They met with a kiss on each cheek at Fairbairn Airbase at 3.09pm yesterday. Merry chatter followed, but it’s not known if Obama raised the issue of “coconut bras”, as he did at their most recent rendezvous, in Hawaii, last weekend.
Obama spread his touchiness generously. Governor-General Quentin Bryce may seek a phsyiotherapist after committing to the longest handshake ever on Australian soil, then the fastest wardrobe change.
Gillard glowed, head bowed, as though a new beau was being introduced to the family for the first time.
Gillard and Obama plainly like each other – which puts them ahead of John Howard and Bill Clinton, and Malcolm Fraser and Jimmy Carter.
In Obama’s company, Gillard looks like she’s won a date with George Clooney. Their encounters, the respectful gazes as the other speaks, the touches of familiarity, stand to bestow her with a statesmanship she may have lacked until now.
Obama does charisma like an actor breezing through an audition for a role he’s already got. Like Clinton, his various styles of handshake merit a collection. Two hands for ladies, for example, head jutted forward, smile engaged. Or he applies the Mark Latham vigour — without the menace.
Gillard opened their joint press conference with the quavering voice of her not-so-good days. She sounded like she had just had bad news. Maybe she was nervous. Gillard calmed as she announced details of an increased US troop presence on Australian soil.
Even looking on, silently, Obama looked poised.
He tried on a requisite “Good-day” before describing the lady next to him alternately as “Madame Prime Minister” and “my friend Julia”. The second label sounded more natural.
Everyone was curious about China, the new world power that stands to eclipse the US, yet lacks the freedoms that the US, the world’s self-appointed super policeman, espouses.
Obama couched his encouraging thoughts with a cover-all “if”. China’s rise was a “win-win”, he said, but only if it played by the rules and regulations of being a world power. “We are here to stay,” he said.
The press conference was a rather stiff affair, few laughs, plenty of coded messages on Afghanistan, climate change and the rise of India and China.
And, for more than half an hour, Obama and Gillard did not touch — that is, until they walked from the podium, and placed a hand on each other’s back.
So far, Gillard has avoided the sort of phrase that causes cringing decades later.
Last night, she spoke of a “restless, forward questing” shared between the countries. She has added a dash of coquettishness, if not flirting, to US-Australian relations.
The relationship has evolved. Gillard could claim it as one of the “new paradigms” she promised on taking office.
Perhaps truer tests await when China and the US start diverging on the position they would like everyone’s favourite southern business partner to adopt.
If Gillard has been fawning, she can cite numerous historical benchmarks.
Howard and George W. Bush had a seeming “bromance”. No one before or since has called Howard the “man of steel” without irony.
The American public, many without jobs, may scoff if the Gillard-Obama coupling comes to be dubbed “J-Ob”.
Obama wasn’t cheered by hordes of people. Neither was the Queen several weeks ago.
The biggest show on Earth did demand that everyone stand still, however. Secret Service men watched on, like funeral directors on steroids. Chopper rotors thwomped overhead. Jets roared.
To add to the surreal edge, Kamahl materialised in a Parliament House corridor.
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