Tony Blair: Britain's Bush And Obama

Most world leaders, like movie stars, have a certain intensity when they walk into a room. Not Tony Blair. He's mild, light on his feet; he disarms not with seduction but with extreme agreeableness. The first time we meet, in a formal room of the president's house at Yale University, he pulls open the door and walks in before his aide does. There's no warning, no fanfare, no nothing. Just ... boom, there he is.

"I'm so sorry to be dressed like this." Which is to say, by Blair standards, informally: gray T-shirt, blazer, acid-washed jeans.

As it happens, today is November 5, the day after Barack Obama's victory, and Blair seems as elated as the rest of the world. He says he spent the evening in the Caribbean flipping between the BBC and CNN (he declines to give details, but his friend Cliff Richard owns a house in Barbados). "I've never known an election to create so much interest and transform people's view of America again in a positive way," he says. "Young people out in the middle of nowhere in Palestine have said to me, 'They wouldn't really elect a black man to the presidency,' and I've said, 'Well, I think they would.' But they've been taught for so long that America is ... what it actually isn't. And that's why this is an enormous moment. It thrills America's friends and sort of confuses its enemies."

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