Looks like President Bush is adopting a “when in Rome” attitude to casual dress when traveling. On his tour of Mayan ruins in Mexico, Mr. Bush looked cool and comfortable in a version of the traditional white guayabera shirt. These straight-bottomed shirts that hang over the waist originated in Cuba but are popular throughout Latin America. Case in point: Mexican President Fox wore a long-sleeved version on the same trip.

President Bush, however, adopted a Hispanic look in much the same way that he speaks Spanish: with a distinctly American accent. An actual guayabera has vertical rows of pleats and is made of thin cotton to keep men breezy in steamy climates. Mr. Bush wore a thicker, plainer version of the real thing. What gives? Why not go all the way?

The commander-in-chief does get style points for trying. At least he didn’t wear the general-store-quality short-sleeve shirts he wears for days on the ranch in Crawford, Texas. In Mexico, he managed to blend.

Which is not always the case. On his three-day trip to India in March, he showed up at an agricultural university – where he poked around the dirt with a garden hoe and got a lesson in how to pick cotton – while sporting a standard-issue Washington blue shirt and trousers. Plus a pen in the shirt pocket. But nothing remotely Indian. He rolled up his sleeves for the manual labor, but he does that at any opportunity.

To be fair, the president has gone the extra mile in the past and donned some serious ethnic garb. In a 2002 visit to China, he and other heads of state wore colorful jackets of embroidered silk. But until he starts wearing Afghani hats to visit Hamid Karzai, it’s still a policy in development.