Ties That Bind

President Barack Obama's tour of china was an exercise in awkwardness, micromanaged and tightly controlled by a host intolerant of spontaneity. His meeting with Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao was, to put it kindly, stilted. Flash forward a week to the lawns of the White House and the difference couldn't be more palpable. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh , the guest of honor at the first-ever official state dinner in the Obama era, was feted in an atmosphere of easy conviviality, surrounded by a bubbly cast of celebrities and power brokers who toasted the bonds between the world's largest...