Every year, as late summer gives way to the deep red and gold of a New England fall, world leaders get the chance to spend a few days schmoozing in New York. The United Nations gets back to business this week, and for the next few days leaders as different as presidents Chirac, Musharraf and Ahmadinejad will get the chance to strut their stuff in front of the General Assembly, the UN’s main debating chamber. What they say will be noted and recorded with interest – but the leader that everyone wants to hear from is President Bush, and he gets his chance at the podium on Tuesday.

Throughout his stint at the White House, Bush has made little secret of his dissatisfaction with the UN. He regards it as sloppy and inefficient and suspects that it is dominated by lefty enemies of the US. That’s why he backed John Bolton’s appointment as the US ambassador last year, and that’s why he’s fighting tooth and nail to encourage the Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee to re-appoint him.

Bolton is very much Bush’s man, and as an abrasive right-wing hawk he fits perfectly with the White House’s view of foreign policy. But there’s no guarantee he will keep his job at the UN come January when his appointment ends.

It’s not the first glitch to hound the president. He has already been defied by the Senate armed forces committee, which refused to support new measures permitting classified evidence to be withheld in trials involving “high-value” terrorists while allowing coerced confessions to be used in court.

Both committees are dominated by the Republicans, but that hasn’t stopped rebellion breaking out in their ranks. They don’t like this new draconian style of justice, and have told the president that its introduction would not only undermine the authority of American courts, but would also expose US personnel to similar treatment if they fell into enemy hands.

All this background noise will give Bush’s policy wonks some food for thought as they spend this weekend fine-tuning the president’s thoughts. That Bush will speak about the war on terror is a given. Five years on from September 2001, this is a recurring obsession with the White House, and the Bush administration is desperate to show it is starting to get it right. Ahead lie the all-important mid-term elections which will provide a snapshot of how well the Republicans are doing and how things stand between them and the American people.

On the foreign policy front it doesn’t look particularly good. Afghanistan is still an unwon cause, Iraq remains a nightmare with daily evidence of the kind of violence that is usually the harbinger of civil war, the US egged the pudding over Iran’s nuclear capabilities and Team Bush sees nothing wrong with Guantanamo Bay.

Faced by those unappealing facts, Bush will do his best to prove to the rest of the world that his war on terrorism can be won and that he needs more support from the world community. It’s a noble thought, and in normal times there would be few quibbles. But the times are out of joint. We find ourselves involved in a war against a faceless enemy, but that hasn’t stopped the killing and the dying. In fact, in many people’s minds, the efforts to date have just made things worse.

If Bush wants to get the world on side then he has to come up with something a bit more positive. Torturing suspects and denying them their rights isn’t being strong on terrorism. It’s being downright wrong-headed.