- WHO John Desrocher
- WHAT United States consul-general
- WHERE His office
- WHY Because he asked us over
Fourth of July celebrations in one inner-city office were brought forward two weeks so the boss could celebrate before leaving for his next posting. Baghdad. Where the American Independence Day festivities might be more muted.
In the reception area is a box of red, white and blue cardboard Stetsons. I want to ask John Desrocher to put one on. I'd hoped the outgoing United States consul-general would pose for our camera for the sake of God and country. But it was soon obvious that he'd politely decline.
The meeting was initiated by the diplomat's office and is not about learning anything more about Mr Desrocher, or what exactly he's done in New Zealand for three years, but about him promoting America to you.
``To take Americans from the TV set,' he says, ``and give them another dimension.' That would make three motives in total.
The front desk had US Border Control, complete with metal detector, but we weren't entering another country, just a nondescript floor of a Customs St office block. A floor that can be closed down at the flick of a switch to protect Mr Desrocher.
The reason for the meeting, we were told by the communications man sitting in - and recording -our interview, was to let our readers know a foreign observer's views on life in Auckland.
We were forewarned that the man with the impressive Middle East economic negotiating record would be ``loath to go into too much detail on the pros and cons of a super-city'.
This local government issue is, somehow, too ``contentious' and ``he is, after all a diplomat'.
A large New Zealand map is all but framed by an American flag in Mr Desrocher's office. It looks weird but sets the scene for our American-New Zealand public relations exercise.
Mr Desrocher says that his greatest achievements - or the one he is prepared to tell us about -are the student work-travel visas he helped secure to ``give young New Zealanders the chance to know and experience America'.
Americans, says Mr Desrocher, have been here for 200 years and were among the first whalers to land on New Zealand soil. American diplomats, he tells us, arrived in Russell only a little more than a century ago.
I get it. We have a shared history. But do a few whalers' graves and a long- since demolished consulate office mean we will share a future?
Part of Mr Desrocher's job is to advance the interests of the United States and report back to Washington.
Asking what those interests are and what was reported is futile. Neither could I find out about his brief from Washington when he arrived here three years ago. He is, after all, a diplomat with a degree in international relations. There must be a paper on appropriate clever vagueness.
You'd hope that behind closed doors, diplomats would cut to the chase over international issues, otherwise things would never get done.
Oh, hang on. How many major international breakdowns have been resolved in any one lifetime?
We're told that Mr Desrocher lived in Auckland's eastern suburbs. Where exactly, it would seem, is out of bounds.
Even a relatively simple question like, ``What do you do in your spare time?' meets a well-heeled, circular, verbal motion.
He took this as a cue to mention his trip to Russell to admire the American whalers' graves. However, the headstones just won't tip the public relations scale for some, given the land of the fair and free is blocking our dairy, beef and sheep exports.
How is it that Mr Desrocher and his ilk cannot understand that subsidies and tax incentives for their own farmers fly in the face of free trade?
And the fact that we've organised a trade deal with the ideologically different China before America may not bode well for his PR machinations.
This musing raises a mere murmur of a response.
Mr Desrocher says the process is very ``labour-intensive' and ``ebbs and flows'.
What, exactly, is stopping that progress was not something we're going to discuss with the man who is credited with leading aspects of the US free trade agreements with Chile and Singapore.
Mr Desrocher is a large man with military bearing, offset by a well- groomed newsreader cowlick. But he's no ordinary pen-pusher.
He arrived from the US outpost in Cairo, where he served as counsellor for economic and political affairs and participated in Palestinian-Israeli economic negotiations while serving in Jerusalem.
He has also served in Liberia and was a desk officer in Iraq.
Celebrating Independence Day in June on the flipside of the globe in Auckland is not all that strange when you purposely sign up for a stint in war-torn Baghdad.
What was this man with State Department awards for Middle East negotiations doing here?
I still don't really know, but he says to thank you all for having him.