POTEMKIN COMPASSION

On Friday, as part of an African tour, Laura Bush visited the Nelson Mandela Primary School in Bamako, Mali. Today, NPR's Addie Goss had a rather devastating story about how this rundown school in a very poor country was spruced up -- partially and temporarily -- for Mrs. Bush's visit (and the cameras):

... Heat, dust, and smog normally make the afternoons here unbearable. But, after weeks of work, the Nelson Mandela School felt like an oasis.

It was Thursday, only twenty-four hours left before the First Lady's visit, and a work crew from the U.S. embassy was installing electrical outlets in two classrooms. The next day, the outlets would power the fans to cool Mrs. Bush and the rest of the crowd. But, like most schools in Mali, the Mandela School doesn't have enough money for electricity, so the power cord from these new outlets led out the windows to a mobile generator the embassy brought over and hid out back.

Rebecca Rhodes is the project manager for the Teacher Training Via Radio program, which is entirely funded by President Bush's African education initiative. For two weeks, Rhodes has worked with White House security and communications crews to make the school picture perfect for the First Lady's visit.

REBECCA RHODES: So Mrs. Bush's limousine and the limousine of Mali's First Lady would come through the door there at the front of the school, and then she will walk down this lovely gravel (laughs) that we have just put down.

GOSS: About the gravel: USAID bought it so that the First Lady wouldn't slip on the mud in the courtyard. The gravel just covers the portion of the courtyard Mrs. Bush would see....

Demba Bundi is a high school teacher who works with the Teacher Training Via Radio program.... He was ... struck by some selective repainting on the walls surrounding the school.

DEMBA BUNDI: Only the entrance door has been painted new, because that's where everybody gets in, but the rest of the wall, it's dirty, and you have all these American gangster-boy kind of graffiti on the wall, and nobody seems to care about that....

Goss went back to the school yesterday, after the (brief) visit. She noted that the Americans and the press left behind water bottles and other trash -- they didn't clean up after themselves. Oh, but the embassy did remove the generator and the fans and the outlets -- heaven forbid they should provide amenities to the school after using it for a photo op (and heaven forbid they should paint the parts of the school that weren't in the pictures).

But when you look at the White House Web site, you've got to admit these phonies do a nice job making the place look photogenic.