American media spin quite positive

No coverage of Bush’s forgotten gift

Despite lukewarm and indifferent local media coverage, Bush’s visit certainly raised Estonia’s profile in the western press. The Boston Globe framed Bush’s brief stopover as “a token of American gratitude for the Baltic ally's strong support in both Iraq and Afghanistan.” USA Today even went so far as to resurrect old Bush speeches: “Bush hailed Estonia and its neighbors Latvia and Lithuania for ‘one of the most dramatic’ political transformations that proved ‘the love of liberty is stronger than the will of an empire.’”

To be fair, coverage was little more than a few sentences in most American newspapers. Though if American media had devoted as much space to the Bush visit as the local press, it too might have written about Bush forgetting one of his gifts from Estonia on the table (a Skype telephone). But probably not.