Cramped into a wheelchair by his polio, Roosevelt was understandably the less mobile of the pair, but he did — under immense discomfort and stress — make three incredibly important journeys abroad as the war against the Axis was intensifying, both to negotiate with Britain and Russia as well as to consult with commanders like Eisenhower.

Between January 9 and 30, 1943, he travelled to join Churchill and the Combined Chiefs at the vital strategic conference at Casablanca; between November  13 and December 11, 1943, he made the even more difficult journey to Cairo and Teheran, where he and Churchill were joined by Stalin; and between January  22 and February 27, 1945, he travelled to the Yalta Conference, where, his exhausted condition showing plainly in photographs, he played a critical role.

In all, those meetings consumed nearly three months of a life not far from its close. The man was bravery itself, and an inspiration to all who fought under him.

In terms of wartime travels, Winston Churchill was in a class by himself, endowed with the constitution of an ox and imbued with a keen interest in almost every aspect of the war.

In addition to all the major Allied conferences, from Argentia in 1941 to Potsdam in 1945, he repeatedly insisted on going to the scenes of battle, to the great delight of the troops and the British public.

A photographic essay of his war years would tell it all: Churchill amidst the smoldering ruins of London houses in the 1940 “Blitz”, Churchill with Montgomery and his troops in Egypt, Churchill in Sicily, Churchill with Eisenhower on the Normandy beaches.

It was often difficult to keep him away from the front-lines. One remarkable photograph of July 1944 shows him standing, cigar in mouth, at a British Army observation post, watching shells burst on German positions along the road below in the midst of the Normandy fighting.

I invoke these images of the two great leaders because I have also been thinking of another wartime commander-in-chief, whose eight-year tenure is drawing to an end.A comparison of the present Bush administration with the record of Roosevelt and Churchill is actually not unfair, if only because the White House itself has so insistently invoked that earlier age, the era of “the greatest generation.”

To most members of the present Bush administration — and to American neoconservatives more broadly — Churchill himself is an icon, the historic embodiment of what they in their turn have been pursuing in their own global war.

It is, therefore, instructive — and to me, rather disturbing — to list the number and the duration of the visits that President Bush has paid to the actual theatres of war since our invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, beginning in 2001, nearly seven years ago (remember, Churchill was prime minister a lesser time).

For Iraq, the tally reads:

Nov. 27, 2003, for two and a half hours , at a Thanksgiving dinner with American troops, exclusively in the large U.S. base at Baghdad International Airport

June 3, 2006, for five to six hours , in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone Sept. 3, 2007, for six to seven hours , visiting Al-Asad Air Base, the American fortress in western Anbar Province.

That’s not even a full day in Iraq in more than five years of fighting. Wow! Those who doubt presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s experience of, and familiarity with, the world outside the United States may have forgotten that during his January 2006 visit to Iraq, he actually spent two days (according to ABC News) “flying to areas outside the safety of the green zone to meet with American and military commanders on the ground.”

The president has visited Afghanistan only once, where he spent five hours in Kabul, on March 1, 2006, when conditions were fairly stable. What, one wonders, was the point?

How can we explain this? In the case of Iraq above all, how can a leader instigate a long, messy war, keep demanding hundreds of billions of dollars for it, appeal to the American people to stay the course, and not actually spend some time there to see what is going on?

Real commanders surely ought to demonstrate, not obsessively (like Hitler) but at least regularly, a deep interest in what is happening to the forces under their command.

Although this war in Iraq is likely to be the principal legacy of the Bush
administration, the Chief has shown very little enthusiasm for getting close to it.

I draw two conclusions from this, neither of which make me particularly happy. The first is that this president finds it emotionally difficult to be at close quarters with the aftermaths of disaster and setbacks, whether in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in the ravaged streets of Iraqi cities, or in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks. It would have been something if Mr. Bush had been seen shoulder-to-shoulder with the combative Mayor Rudy Guiliani, supervising the rescue operations following that vicious attack.

Secondly, I do not buy the argument that, in order to avoid another Kennedy-type assassination, the president of the United States should be cocooned from absolutely any danger. It is a completely unhealthy state of affairs that the most important decision-maker in the world should be so relentlessly protected from anything that is unpleasant, like some of the later czars of Imperial Russia.

It is unhealthy that presidential Press conferences are increasingly such prefabricated, uncontroversial events. It is truly unhealthy that there exists no political place where the head of government has to debate his critics.
 Finally, it is unhealthy that the presidential “minders” and security bureaucrats insist that no risks should be taken — none at all. After saying farewell to his great friend Roosevelt at Casablanca in January 1943, the 68-year-old Churchill then flew around German-held Tunisia to visit his troops in Egypt, took a train up the Syrian coast to meet with the Turkish president, flew to Tripoli, slept in an Army truck (!), wept openly at a parade by his favourite Highland and New Zealand divisions, had lunch with Montgomery as nearby anti-aircraft guns drove off a German reconnaissance plane, and prepared to fly home four weeks after he had left London.

One of the two B-24 Liberators carrying other participants in the Casablanca conference had badly crashed and, as Churchill waited for takeoff, he told his military secretary: “It would be a pity to have to go out in the middle of such an interesting drama without seeing its end. But it wouldn’t be a bad moment to leave.” (!)

American  politicians, especially those in the highest offices, who like to think of themselves as being Churchillian should think again.

But if that is their fantasy and aspiration, they might consider visiting their own troops in the theatre of operations at least once before this administration folds, or the war whimpers to an end. They might even consider staying there for a few days. They might like to watch the Army and Marine Corps actually firing in battle.

Why not? Washington wouldn’t miss them at all.