A quick media review:
•In the style of COHA’s Welcome to Washington, Mr. President articles, we have Welcome to Ulaanbaatar, Mr. Bush, which fights stereotypes that I doubt Americans held about Mongolia.
•An interesting quote about the blame game, a common feature in donor politics:

“Every side is looking for a scapegoat instead of answering the question: What went wrong?'’ Enkhtuya Oidov, the general-secretary for Mongolia’s National Council for the MCC, said in an e-mail response to questions. “Rightly or wrongly Mongolians blame both — not only corrupt politicians but also donors who were so ignorant about where the money goes.'’(Source)

•Bush’s speech: an odd choice of a metaphor for the Mongolian-US partnership?

“There is a legend of a Mongolian woman who gave each of her five sons an arrow. She told each to break the arrow in his hand — which they did. She then tied five arrows together, and told each to try and break the bundle. None could do it. And she told them: Brothers who stand alone, like single arrow shafts, can be broken by anyone - but brothers who stand together, like a bundle of arrows, cannot be broken.” Hmmm….

Clearly, an important cause of the visit was Mongolia’s committment of troops in Iraq. What will be the effect of this trip? It will likely increase the legitimacy of the government. However, this would only help current politicians, who will be able to duck issues of corruption by clinging to the memory of the event. Symbolically, it represents an affirmation of the direction charted by the Mongolian government - one which, while clearly not bad, given the regional context, is far from ideal. Great opacity and bureaucracy combine to deny ordinary people access to the political process, and even NGOs, staffed by smart, engaged citizens, find it extremely difficult to make progress. Media is still very problematic. Hopefully, the ultimate message from the visit will be that Mongolia still has promise, but needs to accelerate the pace of political reform in order to qualify for MCC money - clearly the biggest carrot in the US’s toolkit.