In mid-December, in the midst of the controversy over racist remarks by Senator Trent Lott, Bush administration officials intimated that a presidential trip to Africa in January would demonstrate the U.S. president’s sensitivity to African American concerns. If President George W. Bush had followed through on his plan to visit five African countries, Africans would have posed hard questions: Is your policy “just another trip”? Or are you willing to commit real resources to responding to the deadly threat of AIDS, and to other urgent African priorities?