US President Barack Obama arrived in Cambodia last night having just won four more years in office, but that is nothing compared to his host, Hun Sen.
The Cambodian prime minister has held power since Ronald Reagan was in the White House, and says he is not stepping down until he is 90.
Hun Sen, 60, has a knack for making sure his rivals end up in jail or in exile. A laudatory biography is sub-titled Strongman of Cambodia, and some would say that was putting it mildly.
Yet, through his country's civil wars, a UN peace process and several elections, the one-time communist cadre has always managed to come out on top. Over the past decade, he has also overseen modest economic growth and stability in a country plagued by desperate poverty and nearly destroyed under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Obama's visit, the first by a United States president, comes because Cambodia is hosting the annual East Asia Summit.
These days, Hun Sen has styled himself as an elder statesman, and he is anxious to win international respectability to go along with the economic growth.
Cambodia has moved increasingly closer to China in recent years, but the US, too, has expanded its efforts to court its prime minister.