Bono: a shaky grasp on the past

There's much in Sean O'Hagan's interview with Bono in today's Observer Music Magazine, and if you were judging him on the basis of a singer in a rock and roll band, you'd probably be content with the breadth of his knowledge. But given that he's shaping public policy, his lack of understanding and glib grasp is a little worrying. Take this, for example:

It's a scary and an amazing time. Look, the world is waking up again. Not to get too grandiose on your ass, but there are shifts that always happen after a major crisis. So, after the First World War, the League of Nations; after the Second World War, the United Nations. The IMF, the World Bank, all came about after periods of crisis. And after 9/11, the Iraq dabacle, and the market meltdown of the last year, I think this is the moment when actually everything is up for grabs. It's like Bob Dylan says on Brownsville Girl [he breaks into a Dylan impersonation]: 'If there's an original idea out there right now, I could use it [laughs].' And there are original ideas out there, that's the thing."

You could just about accept "not to get too grandiose on your ass", I suppose, but when it's the most coherent part of the sentence, you might choose not to. "There's always shifts after a major crisis"? What does that mean? Is he suggesting that The League Of Nations was a good thing, despite it being a terrible, terrible failure which helped bring about the Second World War, while simultaneously allowing Africa to remain a playground for the Western Imperial powers? And wasn't, really, the Second World War the real shift that followed the First World War?

More closer to now, is Bono trying to smear together the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the Iraq "debacle" (I wonder if he ever called it that when he was hanging with George Bush) and the global financial meltdown into one, single, event? How does that make sense - after all, the global reaction to September 11th was almost in complete contrast to the global reaction to the invasion of Iraq?

O'Hagan asks Bono if he ever thinks he's being played:

"I don't care if I get the results. You have to judge me only by the results. If there were no results and you saw a picture of me hanging out with George Bush or Tony Blair or whoever, that would be a different matter. But if you see a picture of me and Bush and two years later you hear people saying 'How on earth did a conservative administration start the largest response to the Aids emergency yet?' I understand why people threw tomatoes at me at the time but even the worst critics have stopped."

Even the worst critics have stopped? Bloody hell, Bono, even you and Geldof were criticising world leaders for not doing enough last year. And you're hardly anywhere near your harshest critic.

It is true that Bush did support Africa more deeply than Clinton. But the evangelical edicts which came with much of the AIDs initiative money, like the Abortion Global Gag Rule, did a lot of harm, leading to the closure of clinics and making it harder for some people to receive condoms and sex education - so the funding of HIV drugs has to be seen in the context of the work Bush helped do to fuel the HIV crisis at the same time. And while Bono might think that it was his golfing trips at Gleneagles that swung the attention the Bush White House gave, especially in the second term, it's more likely that result of the Chinese rush to access the agricultural, energy and strategic value of African nations. For while there's been some Bono-pleasing health investment, Bush was building up AFRICOM. But perhaps Bono sees Africom as simply another body in the mould of the LON, the UN and the IMF.

So, O'Hagan asks, did Bono keep his opposition quiet in return for access to the White House?

"No, it's more that I don't make a song and dance about my criticism. Everyone in the White House knows where I stood on the war. In the run up and when it was just about to happen, I had many conversations where I expressed my feelings. But I felt I had to focus on this one thing which was, don't make a deal on extreme poverty. Make it truly colourless politically. It was the power of one clear idea. And it succeeded. And it was very, very difficult, and there was a lot of hand-holding, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, meeting after meeting after meeting, trying to get people not to play politics with the world's poor. And for me to alienate people who, to be fair to them, were often sending their sons to Iraq I just felt, I don't want to be shouting my mouth off about this war when really I have a chance, along with other people, of achieving for the first time broad political consensus on this one hugely important single issue of Africa and aid."

Aaah - it would have been too confusing for Bono to criticise the war publicly while campaigning on global poverty. Although, erm, somehow it wasn't too confusing for him to make his anti-war feelings known behind closed doors? That makes sense. It would have been distracting for us to know, but not for the administration.

Still, it's all in the past now. Bono is busily recalibrating his non-partisan stance into being surprisingly Democrat-friendly:

The amount of U2 fans who supported [Obama]! The young U2 fanbase were really active in the campaign. Though the One campaigners are from every political colour, an enormous amount of them were also campaigning for Obama."

Sadly, there are no questions about Bono's property developments, nor about U2's tax status. But then, you can't get everything in, can you?