Brown Stumbles As Pope Rules American Airwaves

There was a heightened sense of anticipation outside the British embassy in Washington yesterday morning. The streets round about were closed off by the police, helicopters hovered overhead and onlookers lined the streets.

They were joined by embassy staff, out with their cameras in hopes of a snap as the motorcade flashed past. But it was not their prime minister they were waiting for but the Pope, leaving the papal residence further up the road.

It has been the story of Gordon Brown's visit. He has had to compete for attention in the US media in a week dominated by the first visit of a Pope to the White House in almost 30 years.

The difference in coverage was at its starkest today. The US networks provided live coverage all day of the Pope's departure from Washington for a visit to the United Nations in New York while Brown's departure from the capital for Boston, where he delivered a speech about reshaping the UN and other major international institutions, went unrecorded.

Brown will arrive back in the UK tomorrow as little known in the US as he was before the trip. The influential website, the Drudge Report, carried a picture of Brown at the White House yesterday against a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes and Union Flag and asked: "Who's that man?"

In contrast with prime ministerial visits by the likes of Tony Blair or Lady Thatcher, both well-known in the US, Brown's media coverage was about on par with that generated by predecessors such as John Major: minimal.

At his press conference with George Bush in the White House yesterday, there were, unusually, empty seats and, among the US television crews, only the Fox News correspondent bothered to do a live report.

The News hour with Jim Lehrer had been planning a special on Brown but dropped the idea after listening to the press conference.

The Washington Post carried a banner headline about the Pope on the front but nothing about Brown. Inside, the sketch-writer Dana Milbank attended the press conference, noting the empty seats and the shrunken status of the two men: "You know times are tough when the American president and the British prime minister start talking about the good ol' days of the Blitz."

He added that both men have been dogged by an unpopular war and economic crisis: "Bush is now the most consistently unpopular president since Truman and Brown's support has plunged faster than Neville Chamberlain's after he appeased Hitler."

Brown fared better in the New York Times, with pictures of him on the front with the three presidential candidates and a news report inside of his meeting with Bush.