in early September, Bush decided to drop in on the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group to give his old mate an electoral boost. The event, which officially described itself as “the most significant international gathering of an economic kind that Australia has hosted,” was supposed to be the zenith of Howard’s premiership. It turned out to be the nadir. He was humiliated when Kevin Rudd chatted with the President of China in perfect Mandarin. He was humiliated when a popular TV satire troupe called the Chaser mounted a fake motorcade, flying a Canadian flag and featuring a rented limo with an actor dressed as Osama bin Laden in the back seat, and got within ten yards of Bush’s hotel, making a mockery of an elaborate, war-on-terror-inspired security lockdown that had encased downtown Sydney in a “ring of steel.” Bush, for his part, made a fool of himself (and, by extension, of his host) by calling APEC “OPEC” and Australian troops “Austrian troops.”