The White House love-in

The Clintons embraced Blair's squeaky clean image with relish. But the Prime Minister knows that one day he too will need to call on his special friend

"GOOD FRIENDS" the power couples may be, but here are two questions we can be fairly confident the Blairs did not put to the Clintons during their visit to Washington last week.

"Tell me, Hillary, how do you cope with Bill's infidelities?" And: "By the way, Bill, have you considered going to therapy?"

We may assume, judging from the exuberant matiness that seemed to characterise the Blair-Clinton exchanges, that they did manage to restrain the urge to ask those all-too- human questions that must surely have been preying on their minds. The Prime Minister did let one remark pass, however, that on careful consideration he might have wished he had kept to himself.

The occasion was Thursday's gala dinner at the White House, an occasion so sumptuous, so intoxicatingly rich in celebrities, wine and song that it was no surprise the Prime Minister momentarily lost his head. There was Steven Spielberg, there was Barbra Streisand, there was Harrison Ford. After the mango-glazed chicken with Chardonnay, the salmon fillet mignon with Sauvignon Blanc, Elton John and Stevie Wonder took turns to serenade the assembled worthies at the piano. There was one ticklish moment when Stevie Wonder burst into "I Just Called To Say I Love You", reminding as it did a few snickerers in the crowd of the President's reported predilection for intimate chatter on the phone, but otherwise all was going famously until Mr Blair's turn came to speak.

He began well enough, sticking to the gush the script required. "I know I'm not alone in supporting you," he enthused. "I know the American people support you too!" But then the thrill of the occasion and the headiness of the company pushed him to the very brink of what might have been remembered evermore as a legendary impropriety. Turning to Hillary Clinton, he compared the valiant First Lady to Diana, Princess of Wales. The two, he said, possessed similar "qualities of dignity and grace".

He did not, mercifully, add "under fire", for then the Freudian slip would have been revealed in all its shamefulness. As it was, Hillary looked coy but happy, too flattered to reflect that the only possible similarity between herself and Diana (who would never have worn a dress like that) was the shared humiliation of putting up with husbands whose baser appetites, everybody knew, had led them to stray from the marital bed.

But since the Prime Minister did not, consciously, intend any disrespect, the moment passed, and with it the only suggestion of possible tension on a visit that ended up as a rejuvenating celebration of the hoary old special relationship. Usually a trip to Washington by a foreign head of government earns more domestic political points for the visitor than for the host. When the President of Argentina comes to the White House the media in Buenos Aires go into a frenzy, sating the despair of the Argentine public to believe that, if only for a day, their country stands tall in the world. But the US media will ignore the event; a joint press conference will not be held; and Harrison Ford and Barbra Streisand will not be tripping over each other to obtain an invitation to the White House dinner.

It was different with the visit of Tony Blair. In part because of the kinship he and Clinton enjoy, the Oxford past, the lawyer wives, the similar agendas, the shared fascination for policy wonkery. During a business lunch at the White House on Thursday, an informal affair where the two leaders and their advisers discarded jackets and loosened ties, Mr Clinton said: "I couldn't have a conversation like this with anyone else," meaning any other foreign leader. Sandy Berger, the President's national security adviser, agreed, observing: "There is more to this than just a shared language."

The mood was such that an unwary observer could have been forgiven for imagining he was witnessing not a bilateral exchange but a domestic cabinet meeting, the substance of which dwelt on the British and American governments' virtually indistinguishable approach to the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Behind closed doors things might not have been very different under normal circumstances, had the climate outside been less murky. But since the storm was raging at the White House walls, since fresh allegations of sex, lies and cover-ups continued all week to assail the presidential battlements, Mr Clinton was keenly grateful for the opportunity Mr Blair's visit provided to be seen in public conducting affairs of state with the leader of a distinguished European nation. Mr Blair, for his part, will have been grateful for the opportunity to fertilise his aspirations to statesmanship but the need to be seen to be cutting a confident dash was more pressing on the president's side.

So the two strode off to do what Mr Clinton enjoys best, going out into the multitudes and proclaiming his pollsters' favourite message: "Put our children first." The venue was Montgomery Blair High School, named after Abraham Lincoln's post-master general, in Silver Spring, in urban Maryland. As the two entered the school's basketball hall, "Home of the Blair Blazers", the explosion of sound that broke from a thousand teenage throats would have drowned out a low-flying jumbo. And then the dancing began. To the accompaniment of the brass band, a troupe of cheer-leaders in frilly dresses performed what in another place and time might have been taken to be a feverish erotic ritual, a display of comely pubescent femininity for the pleasure of visiting tribal chiefs. Mr Clinton glowed, but did not look unduly perturbed. Mr Blair grinned broadly, flashed thumbs-up signs and generally conveyed the fervour of a man whose adolescent rock-star fantasies had come true.

A teacher in the crowd, a 30-year veteran of Blair High named Norman Stant, had muttered moments before the two leaders' arrival that he considered Mr Clinton's private life to be "despicable". But if the clapometer ratings were anything to go by, the students had not been impressed by the tut- tuttings either from Mr Stant or from the Republicans on Capitol Hill about the example the President was setting the nation's youth. On the contrary. If the President was exercising his droit de celebrite on someone fresh out of cheerleader class not only was he implicitly recognising the students' adolescent craving for sexual recognition, he was confirming his credentials as a genuine, top of the line star.

This was a crowd that could not be displeased. Mr Blair's predictably lame cracks about the school being worthy of his name and so forth elicited extravagant applause, as did his proclamation that he had three overwhelming priorities in government, "education, education, education". Mr Clinton picked up the theme but battled to get a word in edgeways, such was the hysteria of his fans.

Whether Hillary is as besotted as they are remains one of the great questions of the day, but there is no doubting her resolve to act as his first line of defence, a task Mr Blair took upon himself when he made a manful job of imitating her performances on American breakfast TV. He looked uncomfortable in the chatty, one-on-one studio format, lacking Mrs Clinton's studied gravitas and her husband's perfect pitch.

When asked whether he thought Mrs Clinton would make a good president, he replied, rather archly, sounding distinctly unpresidential and just a little camp, "That's such a naughty question, that really is..." And then he came across as gawky and unconvincing, the very opposite of the cool New Briton image he was trying to project, in his repeated use of the word "guys", as in, "I think most guys nowadays, certainly of my generation and younger, try to share some of the responsibility in the home..." Mr Clinton would never call himself a "guy".

But when asked tendentious questions about the importance of integrity in public figures, about whether the President's capacity to function effectively on the international arena had been undermined by the wave of scandals, he followed the Hillary script. "It is much to his credit that he has refused to be distracted from his work for the American people," Mr Blair intoned. "He has authority and standing on the world stage."

He continued the theme, looking far more natural and confident in the presence of a baying crowd, at Friday's joint press conference. The maestro presidential communicator showed he could look after himself under the interrogatory onslaught about the Monica Lewinsky affair but, just in case, Mr Blair would occasionally intervene, responding in the first person plural, shielding his wounded friend from the aggressor's blows.

When Mr Blair said in response to another inquiry about whether private vices were reconcilable with public virtues that possibly the media "were not in the same place as a lot of public opinion in terms of the priorities people people have", the expression on Mr Clinton's face said that, in a less ceremonial setting, he would have rushed across and given him a kiss.

Was the Clinton-Blair love-fest worth it? Or was Mr Blair's desire to ingratiate himself with the President merely demeaning? It was worth it. Mr Blair did, to paraphrase Mr Clinton in the press conference, what he was hired to do. He solidified Britain's relations with the most powerful nation on earth; he prepared the way for a harmonious joint response to Saddam Hussein; and, thinking further ahead, his tediously repetitive expressions of admiration for the President's "solid as a rock" role on Ireland reflected the shrewd calculation that American help is sure to be needed if the obstacles to peace in Ulster are ever to be overcome. When the time comes Mr Blair will cash in his chips. Mixing pleasure with business in Washington, he earned his keep.