In what was probably the Danish equivalent of Nixon going to China, the Prime Minister of Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, paid a visit to President Bush at his ranch in Texas this past weekend. The Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, and the UN will be holding negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009 to finalize post-Kyoto emissions regulations.

The Prime Minister's visit is considered to be a "diplomatic coup". We don't want to diminish the importance of a European President, but think coup might be a slight hyperbole. Denmark might be holding the next high-profile climate negotiations, and claim the currently-thawing Greenland, but it's still, well, Denmark. We dare you to name a more famous export than Hans Christian Andersen.

That said, being the Prime Minister of the country hosting the next big round of negotiations is nothing to dismiss, and Rasmussen could be a potentially influential figure in the international talks. Considering his buddy-buddy relationship with Bush, not to mention their joint affinity for mountain biking, Rasmussen probably has a better chance of influencing Bush than a Nobel Prize-winning climate expert.

We can't understand why Bush was his usual vague, technology-panacea self to the reporters, while secretly telling Rasmussen his willingness to be part of binding agreements, according to the Washington Post. With his approval ratings lower than the water level in Lake Mead, you would think Bush would be playing up anything that would make him more appealing/less despicable to the public.