WHEN it was first announced in the British press that President Barack Obama would be taking David Cameron on Air Force One to watch a basketball match in Ohio, the newspapers did not know whether to swoon with excitement that the prime minister would be the first foreign leader to be granted a ride on the "world's coolest plane", or to sneer that Mr Obama was using the perks of incumbency to woo a swing state. Even as we crossed the Atlantic earlier today, we in the press pack accompanying Mr Cameron to America were unsure just who was using who. The default setting of any British journalist covering a trip to Washington is to assume that their prime minister is the supplicant when it comes to photo-opportunities and signs of favour. (The position is reversed when American presidents pay state visits and are hosted by the Queen. Then the British default assumption is that the president in question is jolly lucky to be treated to a stay at Windsor Castle, horse-rides with the monarch and so on). Adding to the confusion, the prevailing image of Mr Obama in Britain has not much changed since his election. He is still seen as cool, elegant, cerebral and a little aloof (or as one British official puts it admiringly, "he still walks on water as far as Europeans are concerned"). So the idea of Mr Obama descending into the arena and grubbing for votes is a rather alien one. By happy chance, I was in a bar not far from the White House this evening—surrounded by busy, besuited Washington types supping Yuenglings and scoffing sushi and burgers (though not together)—when my dining companion, an old friend, suddenly pointed to the giant television high in one corner. This was showing a halftime interview with Mr Obama and Mr Cameron, live from the floor of the University of Dayton arena. The sound was down, but subtitles for the deaf were scrolling across the screen, so your blogger was able to follow the interview from his bar stool.

The president, looking cool in his shirtsleeves, and oddly unruffled by holding his own giant microphone in his hand, was explaining to the interviewer why he had brought the prime minister of Great Britain to Ohio. Too often, when foreign leaders come to America they only see the coasts, replied Mr Obama. I wanted to bring Mr Cameron to the great state of Ohio, because the heartland is where it's at.

Now, I cannot pretend to understand college basketball, the March Madness championship or the "first four" system, all the more because I was following this via subtitles, but I am pretty sure that Mr Obama then named the University of Ohio as his favourite team to win picked Ohio State University to make the semi-finals. Oh my goodness, I thought to myself, that really is Barack Obama blatantly shilling for votes in a swing state. To a sheltered European, it felt a bit like discovering an archbishop selling insurance door-to-door.

Then came the prime minister. He was wearing his unvarying casual uniform of dark polo shirt and dark trousers, an outfit that always accentuates his few excess pounds and which makes him look the epitome of the slightly unfashionable Englishman on holiday (which I suspect is the point). Thanks to the very large television in my Washington bar, I can report that he seemed a little sweaty. He also seemed less at ease than Mr Obama with his giant microphone, complete with large cube advertising the television network on which he was appearing.

Both Mr Cameron and Mr Obama are a good height, as it happens, but both had the misfortune to look titchy next to their interviewer, Clark Kellogg, a former basketball star who is very tall indeed. Mr Cameron entered into the spirit of the thing, making no bones about the fact that he was shilling for Britain. Thrown a softball question about the London Olympics, he enthused that the stadiums (or stadia as he put it, betraying his fancy education) were all on time and on budget. The British capital was ready and eager for visitors, he said, you're all welcome.

I wish I could report that other patrons in the bar were transfixed by this heroic marketing effort, but I am not sure anyone else had even noticed the interview. Yet I was happy. I felt I had the answer to the question that had been nagging the press pack on the flight across the Atlantic. As far as tonight's jaunt on Air Force One to see Mississippi Valley State play Western Kentucky was concerned, the president and the prime minister were unquestionably using each other. A British leader being used for a photo-op by a sitting American president. I felt obscurely proud.