Bush turns Good Samaritan

The tartest tongue in American newspapers is embarrassed. Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, has come home from the White House's Middle East junket to the unmistakable sound of titters.

Lesser hacks can't resist a chuckle at the discomfort of the withering, flame-haired star from the mighty Times's editorial pages. Republicans have been giggling after suffering so long from her Bush-bashing columns, now collected into the bestselling Bushworld: Enter at Your own Risk.

Dowd, 56, has terrific writing skills and, like Bill Clinton, first came to fame at the fabled New Hampshire primary of 1992. A reporter, she opened a description of the rumbustuous Republican contender Pat Buchanan with the sentence: "The candidate for political incorrectness is on a roll." It was the perfect put-down in nine words.

But venturing abroad with Dubya this month, Dowd (above) broke the cardinal rule - never drink the water, even in the form of an ice cube - and came down with a bad dose of what old colonial Brits called 'Gippy Tummy'.

She called a White House press flack for help. He rushed her to Dr Richard Tubb, Dubya's personal physician, who was to be found in the very same Bahrain hotel she had just ridiculed for its "over-the-top $3bn luxury".

The next day Ms Dowd was still poorly as she faced the hop to the United Arab Emirates on the 'zoo plane' chartered for the press. To the amazement of her peers, she was escorted to Air Force One, where Dubya's personal facilities were on offer, along with a second visit to Dr Tubb in an office right next to the Presidential suite. Her rival on the Washington Post could no longer resist and ratted her out with a gossip story.

The popular theory was that it had all been a dastardly White House revenge plot against Dowd. But Dowd reported that she had been treated kindly and that "nobody complained about her columns".

Back home, she found herself the target of commentators keen to uphold the highest standards of ethics in journalism. Had Dowd compromised herself by accepting a ride with the President?

If gentlemanly behaviour has softened her, Dowd is doing her best to hide it. In her column on Sunday, she mocked her host for "lounging in his fur-lined George of Arabia robe in the Saudi king's tent" (left) while back home oil-rich Arabs and Chinese banks were buying-up unprecedented chunks of America's ailing economy. ·