Stephen J. Harper had only been Prime Minister for five months on this date in 2006 when he arrived at the White House for talks with U.S. President George W. Bush. The pair met privately in the Oval Office, enjoyed a luncheon together and jointly took questions from the White House Press Corp and Canadian reporters. “I'm impressed by his leadership style,” Bush told reporters. “I appreciate the fact that he doesn't mince words, he tells me what's on his mind and he does so in a real clear fashion.” Writing years later in his national bestseller Right Here, Right Now, Harper recalled how the two American Presidents he dealt with in office, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were remarkable leaders, whatever their politics. “I consider (Bush and Obama) to among the most impressive leaders I have known,” he wrote. “I was never at a meeting where the American President was not one of, if not the, best briefed and most articulate individual in the room.” You can read the transcript of the press conference held by Prime Minister Harper and President Bush at the White House at this link.   Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.