While David Cameron enjoys some portentous posing in Obama's jet, mice gnaw at the fabric of his government
Washington hospitality is dangerously intoxicating to British prime ministers. Tony Blair never recovered from his first "Washington high" in 1998. Swivel-eyed after a White House banquet, he came home putting out feelers for a more palatial London residence and a "Blair Force One" jet. American presidents could do no wrong after that. Now David Cameron is doing even better, with an invitation to fly in Air Force One itself. Such a cocaine rush of power could lead Britain to become the 51st state.
The items on Cameron's Washington agenda are draped in imperial purple. Should we withdraw our armies from Afghanistan? Should we station bombers off Iran? What can be done about the rebellious Pashtuns and the piratical Somalis? What moves should we make on Palestine, Syria, the Arab spring and the rumbling might of China? Alexander the Great was a two-bit provincial compared with this portentous posing.
It is hard to see why Cameron needs to be in Washington. He and Barack Obama can chat on the phone. There is no great disagreement that needs sorting out face to face. The topics on the table do not appear on Britain's electoral radar. A travelling prime minister moves in a cocoon of advisers and sycophants, walking red carpets, shielded from controversy and bathed in the cliches of diplomacy. The whole visit is a self-indulgent holiday.
As a result, disaster so often attends these jaunts. James Callaghan returned from abroad to an economic crisis and asked, "What crisis?" Margaret Thatcher fell from power because she thought a Paris dinner more important than grafting for support for her leadership in the Commons. Travel may broaden the mind and make a break from the tedium of home politics, but Cameron's love of foreign parts has taken him on a reported 50 trips since taking office. To what purpose?
When commentators can think of nothing else to say of a leader they rebuke him for lacking vision. He has no programme, no "overall strategy going forward". Hence the current rash of articles on "Who really is Cameron … what does he stand for … where does he think he is going?" The prime minister has styled himself a Tory leader in the heroic mould, a pragmatist, a trimmer, a leader not of detail but of instinct. He continues to play a deft hand where it matters, keeping the coalition show on the road and acting as a superb Commons impresario. He has avoided humiliating the Liberal Democrats, and has taught his party the art of compromise. So far it is working.
This may irk those who like their politics doused in ideology. But as Machiavelli pointed out, a politician can be as high-minded as he chooses, but without power he is just another citizen. A leader who is no pragmatist is dead. Cameron has got that message.
Yet there is a world of difference between the realpolitik of pragmatism and lounging aboard Air Force One. The coming weeks are Cameron's most crucial in office. His chancellor is crafting a budget that will determine if he can go to the polls with a recovering economy. This is a budget the prime minister must sell. That its contents, such as shifts in taxation between rich, middling and poor, should still be debated by leading coalition partners is politically exhilarating, but this debate should have been shut down long ago.
Round the budget swirls the fog of Whitehall wars – wars launched with commendable radicalism by Cameron against the NHS, the planning system, energy policy, bankers' pay, child benefit and financial regulation. But in each case the prime minister has no sooner raised his standard than he has seemed to disengage intellectually. He has left the lobbyists to run the show. He worries only over "what message this is sending" and whether to be supportive or dismissive of colleagues in distress.
With Steve Hilton gone, Cameron has lost his most ardent policy strategist. Presentation dominates content to a degree not seen since Tony Blair was in Downing Street. Thatcher, when facing a similar crisis over NHS reform in 1987, took personal control and hauled it back from the tank trap of competition into which Cameron has fallen. He appears not to have read his own bill. Likewise he cannot have read the first draft of his planning document, before going on television to promise that he would "no more risk the countryside than risk my own family". As for this week's £1bn in sub-prime mortgage guarantees, the entire cabinet seems to have forgotten the year 2008.
Allocating his own time and attention is the hardest part of being prime minister. He must balance foreign against domestic, tactics against strategy, the right thing to do against the quick fix. He must balance the cries of lobbyists against the din of focus groups. There is no escape. At the heart of government there has to be someone in charge, sensing the pitfalls and pressures, wrenching the steering wheel from colleagues when they drive too fast or in the wrong direction.
A prime minister cannot do this when being feted in foreign capitals and seduced by the maidens of military intervention. There is no alternative to late-night boxes and urgent breakfast meetings in Downing Street. While Cameron is carousing his way round the world, the mice are gnawing at the work of his government. All political failure begins with a lack of attention to detail.
• Follow Comment is free on Twitter @commentisfree