“Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit,” Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.
Bush quickly corrected himself. “APEC summit,” he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).
The president’s next goof went uncorrected – by him anyway. Talking about Howard’s visit to Iraq last year to thank his country’s soldiers serving there, Bush called them “Austrian troops.”
Luckily he didn’t speak to Howard in broken spanglish, like he did when he visited Mexico (and joked about getting Montezuma’s revenge). He’s a class act.
The quotes are bad, but the stage thing was just bad staffing. What kind of staff to the President of the United States doesn’t make sure he knows how to get on and off the stage?