Channeling Oscar Wilde, Boris Johnson Takes America by Storm

“I have nothing to declare except my genius,” a 27-year-old Oscar Wilde is said to have quipped to customs agents when alighting at the port of New York in January 1882. Soon after he dazzled an audience at Chickering Hall, an auditorium that once graced the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 18th Street, with a disquisition on the English Renaissance. Wilde spoke on poetry and criticism “in a sepulchral voice to wondering men and women,” the New York Times reported then. The lecture tour that followed brought the carnation-sporting aesthete as far west as San Francisco, with stops as varied as Galveston and even a silver mine in Colorado.It is in this grand tradition of colorful transatlantic types flirting intellectually with the Yankees, arguably pioneered by Alexis de Tocqueville, that the irrepressible Boris Johnson arrived in America. Yesterday at Dallas, Mr. Johnson reportedly had his audience in stitches when he affected a French accent to poke fun at President Macron: “I think it was my French friend and colleague Emmanuel Macron, who said, ‘Putin must not be humiliated.’”Clearly, he has not come to our beautiful, polarized shores to discuss literature. Since his departure from 10 Downing Street in September 2022, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson — a name straight out of an Oscar Wilde play — has found a lucrative career outside of politics on the speaking circuit, even as he continues to serve as a Conservative member of the British parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. According to multiple reports, he earned the equivalent of about $6 million in his first six months after leaving Britain’s highest political office. Following a trip to Washington in January during which he pressed Biden administration officials to supply Ukraine with fighter jets and also met with a number of Republican lawmakers, a think tank suggested Mr. Johnson take his case for bipartisan support for the war deep into the heart of Texas.That makes sense, not only because of the strong personal ties that Mr. Johnson forged with President Zelensky while the former was still serving as prime minister, but because as the war goes on and more money is spent as elections in America draw nearer, messaging outside the Beltway will take on growing significance. His message at Dallas was unambiguous and, to borrow a word beloved by Wilde, earnest about resisting Ukraine fatigue: “I just urge you all to stick with it,” Mr. Johnson told a private audience of business leaders and Republican lawmakers over lunch at the wood-paneled Crescent Club. “You are backing the right horse. Ukraine is going to win.”Never a man to misread his audience, Mr. Johnson did not allow the jet lag to make him forget he was among Texans: “Wild horses couldn’t keep me away from the United States,” he said. Mr. Johnson, of course, was born at Manhattan’s Upper East Side. This was Mr. Johnson’s first trip to Dallas, and he reportedly received no remuneration from the Center for European Policy Analysis for the lunch engagement. How much the issue of support for Ukraine will weigh on the 2024 Republican presidential primary in Texas remains to be seen. On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson was scheduled to meet with Governor Abbott at Austin.On Wednesday, he moves on to Las Vegas to speak at the SCALE Global Summit, “where capital innovation and purpose collide.”In the wake of mostly minor ethics scandals that led to his resignation, Mr. Johnson’s popularity has tumbled in Britain, but sheer force of personality may yet make him the British equivalent of the Teflon president, as Ronald Reagan was familiarly known. As for Boris Johnson and President Trump, despite some disagreements the two are said to have a close relationship. Neither is beholden to official schedules at the moment, so will they be in touch before Mr. Johnson jets back to London? It will be interesting indeed to see if what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

Channeling Oscar Wilde, Boris Johnson Takes America by Storm

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