The Americans took over Belfast for the day, both in the air and on the ground, but out on the streets there was a sense of indifference to the visit, writes Gerry Moriarty.
PRESIDENT GEORGE Bush gave Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness a supportive pat on the back yesterday afternoon after they very briefly spoke to the press, and then with an encouraging smile shepherded them back into Stormont Castle, as if he owned the place.
In a sense he did. Or, at least, his secret service did. They took over Stormont yesterday. In fact they took over Belfast from ground level to the skies. Traffic was disrupted, some schools were closed, there was a no-fly zone over the city.
In fact, they were so security conscious that they briefly confiscated the ceremonial sword of the Lord Lieutenant who, with a host of others, greeted president Bush and Laura Bush at Belfast International Airport yesterday. The president would not be cleaved in Northern Ireland.
A spotter plane and a helicopter circled over Stormont just to make sure no one breached the edict while Mr Bush was meeting and greeting the First Minister and Deputy First Minister as well as Taoiseach Brian Cowen, British prime minister Gordon Brown, and former first minister the Rev Ian Paisley.
There would be no threat to Potus or to Flotus when they were on the last stage of their farewell European tour. The acronyms, which the president's people employ, stand for president and first lady of the United States.
Mr Bush was briefly in town to say that he and America still care about Northern Ireland and the peace process that they advanced and promoted. But out on the streets there was a sense of indifference.
Maybe Northern Ireland has got blasé about the leader of the "Free World" dropping in for an afternoon chat.
And you would wonder too if the Taoiseach would have preferred to have been locked up with his senior ministers and officials planning how he will explain the embarrassing No vote on the Lisbon Treaty to his fellow EU leaders on Thursday, rather than making small talk with Mr Bush.
There was a large media presence on the grounds of Stormont, but such was the security and such was the absence of access that initially there was little to report.
Some MLAs complained about the cancellation of yesterday's sitting of the Assembly. Why didn't George come and address them in the chamber, they muttered.
The only other MLAs spotted at Stormont were Tommy Gallagher of the SDLP and Kieran McCarthy of Alliance. Not normally frontliners, the broadcasters were delighted and relieved to grant them plenty of airtime yesterday.
There were protests in the city centre and outside the gates of Stormont against Mr Bush and the war in Iraq. But the numbers attending were dismally small, with barely 100 outside Stormont.
Some managed to scale City Hall to remove the British union flag and briefly replace it with the Iraqi flag.
And the usual contradictions applied: while McGuinness entertained Mr Bush his party colleague and Assembly member Daithí McKay joined the anti-Bush protests. And while SDLP minister Margaret Ritchie met Laura Bush and SDLP MLA Alban Maginness greeted Mr Bush at an east Belfast integrated school, young SDLP members demonstrated against the VIP visitor.
Most of the president's travelling press corps took a rain check on the Northern Ireland visit, heading home across the Atlantic to their families in the US while George took tea with Peter and Martin. The unhappily described "death watch pool" of about a dozen US reporters stayed with him in Belfast, however; their function, as the title suggests, to be close by just in case . . .
Still, Guinness supplied them with free pints of stout at Stormont Castle to try to jolt them out of the trough of despond they must constantly inhabit. No free pints of plain for the local reporters though - whatever that implies. Mr Bush, who like Ian Paisley doesn't touch the Devil's Buttermilk, was in genial form, happy and willing to include Belfast on his tour.
He was trenchant too in insisting that in his last six months in office he would be no lame-duck president and would continue to urge US investment in Northern Ireland as long as Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness continued to "make history" by making politics work.