US experts left ‘impressed’
WASHINGTON : Most of the attendees at Rahul Gandhi’s meetings in Washington DC had gone expecting a man they had come to know through news or otherwise, but found him either “very impressive” or “much more substantive than imagined” or as someone who “spoke very cohesively”.
The Congress vice-president met a range of Washington DC policy experts, political strategists and lawmakers — all hardnosed individuals who are not easy to impress — at a string of closed-door meetings on Monday, at the start of the second leg of his US tour that kicked off last week with an interaction with students at a California university.
“I have known him and seen him for a while and he seemed much in charge of himself and his facts,” said one of those who heard Gandhi on Monday, on condition of anonymity because the meeting was supposed to be private. “He spoke very cohesively and … (made) pretty good points in a forceful manner.”
“Most of us were pleasantly surprised,” the person added, noting he did not want to sound patronising.
Another person, a former official, said “he was better than” he had heard he was and “much more substantive than I (had) imagined”.
The Congress leader’s visit to the US was planned as the start of a “new conversation” by the party with the larger goal of representing a leader widely wrongly defined by a “machine”, as Sam Pitroda, a friend of Gandhi’s father described the apparatus deployed by the BJP.
Gandhi did not complain directly about this mischaracterisation of him at any of his meetings, but may have alluded to it, according to one of those present, while talking generally about the “dangers of social media”.
Gandhi started with a meeting at the liberal leaning Center for American Progress, attended by its founder John Podesta, adviser to former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Neera Tanden, a veteran of two Democratic White Houses, and former US ambassadors to India, Tim Roemer and Richard Verma.
He also met the US-India Business Council, an advocacy group promoting stronger business ties between the two nations, and then a group of conservatives.
Republican senator Corey Gardner dropped by during this meet, and invited Gandhi to his home-state Colorado.