A Surprise Visitor

President Obama paid a surprise visit on President Karzai of Afghanistan over the weekend.

If you’ve decided it’s going to be a casual weekend spent in your sweats on the couch with the remote, having the head of state of another country drop in unannounced is going to really screw that up.

I’m not especially happy when someone pops in unannounced to borrow something, much showing up for the weekend without calling ahead.

And you know he didn’t come alone. There was no mention of Michelle and the girls going along for the ride, so Mrs. Karzai was off the hook – “No, you guys go watch the game, enjoy yourselves. I’ll bring in some sandwiches in a bit.”

In the back of her mind, she’s thinking, “At least the rest of the family didn’t show up. Last time those kids were tearing through the house like a bunch of wild banshees. And that Michelle. She was in MY KITCHEN trying to help. Lookin’ at MY STUFF like hers is all better. We’re in the middle of a war here, don’t she know that I got to make due with those old crusted up cookie sheets, I can’t be buyin’ no new Teflon ones?”

(The other way that one plays out is that the first lady of Afghanistan is a guilt-monger, saying, “I wish he’d brought Michelle and the kids along. I never get to visit with them any more; I’m not sure she really likes me, even. Of course, the kids were so bored last time they were here. We don’t have the toys and snacks that they’re used to. They just sat there and stared around the whole time, and I didn’t know what to do with them. She’s so overprotective, wouldn’t let them go play with the kids in the neighborhood or anything.”)

I suspect it wasn’t really a surprise visit as much as it was an unannounced one. With that posse’ in tow, it’s hard to imagine that Barack can sneak up much of anywhere. If nothing else, the custom paint on the plane is pretty much a give away.

Karzai’s got to think that’s a bit like having an investor come to check on how the project is coming along, like they do on those “Flip this House” TV shows, except this time it’s “Flip this Country”.

They are undoubtedly over budget and over time on the project, and are behind the 8 ball even more since Obama’s predecessor was the architect who designed it and really didn’t leave behind a very good blueprint. It’s more of a “design as you go” type project, which leaves a lot of opportunities for mistakes.

Now the excuses that Karzai (who’s kind of the General Contractor) has been giving the investors don’t fly any more, so the Boss (i.e. the Money Guy) showed up to see if there’s really plumbing and electrical installed or whether he’s getting a lot of doubletalk without much progress. Although much of the meeting was done out of the public eye (like during the commercial breaks on those shows, when you know that the financier is probably going ballistic over the decision to install purple shag carpeting on the bathroom walls because it’s trendy and fun), they came back smiling for the cameras and announced that they will now have definable benchmarks in the future and fully expect the project to be completed shortly.

Probably what we should have been doing all along, if the truth be known, but anyone who’s remodeled a building, much less a country, knows that it always runs over budget, especially if there’s not a good foreman on site keeping tabs on things. There are surprises with any remodeling project and that expensive phrase, “. . . .as long as we’re here, we may as well . . . . “

Unfortunately, we also know that contractor years and earth years have nothing to do with each other. We can only hope that war years aren’t similarly lost in that type of ambiguity and the budget for rebuilding can be reigned in a bit. Until then, surprise visits by the Money Guy or his reps probably ought to continue.