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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mr. Whist who wrote (153955)	6/18/2001 2:51:04 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769668

dailytelegraph.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------- SEVERAL European diplomats observed privately during George W Bush's first European tour how different he is from Tony Blair. The Prime Minister is supremely confident in public but more hesitant in private. By contrast, the American President sometimes stumbles in public, but in private has a very clear road map of where he wants to go. He is also far better informed than much snobbish commentary had led them to suppose. The sharper contrast, however, is with Mr Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton. Emerging tensions were papered over during the last Democratic administration, partly because Mr Clinton did not care that much about many aspects of foreign policy, and partly because he had redefined American interests in so minimalist a fashion. He had other priorities, and didn't want too much trouble. And insofar as Mr Clinton had real goals, they were procedural rather than substantive: he set great store by achieving multilateral consensus on a range of issues, often at a very high price indeed. Mr Bush has begun the task of correcting that imbalance, but this tour was the easy bit. He benefited from low expectations and the hyperbole of the opposition. And he took further wind out of the sails of European critics of his Missile Defence programme by forging a good relationship with Russia's President Putin. If there is a measure of understanding between those two leaders, it will be harder for France and Germany to claim that the world could be on the verge of a second Cold War. But in political and diplomatic terms, these were cyclical gains, not structural ones. The underlying problem at the heart of the transatlantic relationship remains that in perfecting the EU, the European political and official classes are engaged in an act of state-building that has little unifying glue beyond resentment of American power. Sooner or later, these Euro-isolationists will give a mighty shot in the arm to American isolationists: their behaviour will make the aim of diminishing United States influence on the continent self-fulfilling. That is why Mr Bush will need to think radically - as radically as he has done in moving beyond the Cold War doctrines that held that Mutual Assured Destruction and the 1972 ABM Treaty were the cornerstones of international stability. For much of the Cold War era, American policy-makers held that European unity was a good thing. Unity was necessary as a bulwark against Soviet expansion, but it would also be administratively more convenient to deal with an interlocutor that spoke with one voice. These rationales no longer obtain. Indeed what if the EU, as it stands, and as conceived of by its elites, obstructs the President's cherished goal - of building "a Europe whole and free"? Two of the key themes of the EU elites are that the process of integration is (a) inevitable and (b) there is "no choice". That is why there is a desperate need for a "Bush Doctrine" - to offer transatlantic alternatives to the current models of EU integration. These should include membership of Nafta. Many millions of Europeans chafe under the trading, regulatory and fiscal constraints imposed by Brussels. They crave a much looser relationship. Others reject the outworkings of a new European political "civilisation": for instance, the EU view of the evils of capital punishment is not shared by a majority of Britons. Mr Bush, who is a far less "royalist" figure than his father, needs to reach over the heads of his European peers to the ordinary citizens of the continent in a way that no president has done since Woodrow Wilson. Far from encountering monolithic opposition, such a move would actually help to break up the official European consensus. It's a risk, but drifting along with the EU status quo will turn out to be the most dangerous of America's options.

To: Mr. Whist who wrote (153955)	6/18/2001 2:51:45 AM
From: D. Long	Respond to of 769668

telegraph.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------------- THE hostility and ridicule heaped on President Bush during his visit to Europe has provoked a backlash in the United States, with many condemning Continental politicians as anti-American and hypocritical. Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, said Mr Bush had "done well" in Europe and the criticism he had faced had caused a "rallying around the president" even among his political opponents. American newspapers have generally judged Mr Bush's first European trip since winning the White House a success, in part, as William Safire of the New York Times argued, because European expectations were "so contemptuously low". The European reaction to Mr Bush has been perceived as so vitriolic that it has forced even some of his liberal critics to defend their president and reassess whether Europe is as tolerant and sophisticated as they had previously believed. American reporting of European opinion has fanned the flames because it has tended to select the most extreme views. The Guardian description of the Bush White House as a "presidency of dunces" has often been presented as a consensus view. Americans have been particularly indignant about European attitudes to the death penalty and the Kyoto global warming treaty. The Left-leaning New Republic said: "The reason European nations eschew the death penalty isn't that they're more civilised, it's that they're less democratic. Large swathes of the European public actually support the death penalty. The real continental divide is noblesse oblige - in Europe, elites are united against the death penalty, and parliamentary systems allow them to ban it even in the face of the popular will." Mr Safire, a conservative, wrote witheringly: "Ex-Trotskyites in France consider us barbarians for imposing the death penalty on a mass murderer, though more prisoners in French jails committed suicide in the past year than were executed in the US." In the New York Times, Gregg Easterbrook, a New Republic editor, stated that President Chirac, Chancellor Schroder and Wim Kok, the Dutch Prime Minister, were guilty of "breaking the taboo that heads of state do not air disagreements during state visits". Such slights, he argued, were "intended to inflate the European Union's collective ego" and to create a "common antagonist" in Mr Bush to fill the void left by the demise of the Soviet Union. "Trying to build up Europe by acting outraged against America has become the European national sport on many fronts." Michael Kelly of the Washington Post said European public opinion as represented in the European press was "mostly limited to elite opinion". This was nothing new because "for decades this elite class has generally cherished a sneering and jingoistic contempt for America and American values". Mr Kelly, like many commentators across the political spectrum, drew attention to the gap between European rhetoric about global warming and lack of action in implementing the Kyoto protocol. "Bush did not kill Kyoto," he said. "He buried its mouldering corpse." On missile defence, the conservative Wall Street Journal noted that much of the opposition to Mr Bush's proposals came from centre-Left governments that had "trouble accepting that opposing points of view are at all legitimate". But, despite the "widely accepted and unfortunate culture of intolerance for political diversity promoted in Western Europe", Mr Bush had been successful in winning over President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, and Jose Maria Aznar, the Prime Minister of Spain. White House aides said yesterday they believed Mr Bush's "wonderful" meeting with President Putin could lay the foundations of a new relationship. They said they were heartened by Mr Putin's comment that there was a possibility of a "constructive development" on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which Mr Bush wants to abandon.

To: Mr. Whist who wrote (153955)	6/18/2001 7:52:18 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769668

Mounting Democratic Anger: Bush Criticized for Being Genuine by Jim Versluys The Houston Review June 17, 2001 WASHINGTON, D.C.— House Democrats, emboldened by James Jeffords’ recent defection and its consequent transfer of Senate control to their party, are now arguing that Bush has been unfairly resorting to principled leadership, including the unseemly keeping of promises he made on the campaign trail. This deviation from Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton, the House Democrats argue could have serious metaphysical implications. Their constituents might even be forced to find jobs. "Bush was supposed to be slime!" exclaimed House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-MO) in a Saturday news conference. "This is completely unfair. The script says that we are to have a president with no central ideology, but they have one. He is being unacceptably true to his base," Gephardt later complained at the Wednesday Evening Club. "It's supposed to go 'slimy Democrat takes credit for Republican economics, then slimy Republican takes the heat for the end of a cycle'. This is how the balance of the universe is maintained". Several of Gephardt’s Democratic colleagues in the House agreed. "What we have here is a completely unacceptable situation where Bush is not selling out the people who got him into office," said Henry Waxman (D-CA). "When he said he was going to govern from the center-right, we expected, no, we demanded, that he simply roll over and give in to media pressures and allow us to define what the center is. And here we have him actually delivering on his promise to conservatism." "Well, Bush sure did go crackers on us" said progressive Ft. Worth-Star Telegram columnist Molly Ivins. "Everyone knows that when he put the word 'compassionate' on his conservatism, that meant he had to vote like a good liberal. Doesn't Shrub know we own the word and can define it at will?" "Where the hell is copyright infringement laws when you needs 'em? Whooo dogie, that Right there is a dilly danger," Ivins joked in her May 25th column. She also suggested an armed uprising by the oppressed, whom she defined as “anyone who feels bad under capitalism.” Conservatives on Capitol Hill seemed perplexed. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) now reportedly sits for hours at a time in Zen-like contemplation of George Bush’s non-slimy commitment to the Right. Aides on Capitol Hill have found Armey engaged in a “levitation of right harmony” on the floor of the House during votes. William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the magazine whose name we’ve ripped off and pillar of modern mainstream conservatism, claimed he was so filled with joyous energy that he had to "go find Gore Vidal and bust him in the chops" lest he explode from excess enthusiasm. New York Times columnist William Safire told Ann Coulter in an interview in the New York Times Book Review, "We're pissing up a rope in glee." "The etymology in the phraseology of 'pissing up ropes' can be found in the times of Chaucer," Safire added apropos of nothing. "Except for the slight change in the Anglo-American spelling, Queen Elizabeth regularly told the King of France to 'pyss off'. Since hanging was the preferred method of execution at the time, one would 'pyss up the rope' at one's object of scorn" After suffering through a further hour of Safire’s interminable pedantry, Ms. Coulter required immediate hospitalization. Mt. Sinai Hospital listed her as stable, but she still remains in intensive care, and doctors remain uncertain as to when she will emerge from her severe etymology-induced coma. Said Dr. Morton Appelbaum, “The only good thing I can say about this case is that it will bring a new awareness to the dangers posed by William Safire’s self-importance.” Jim Versluys houstonreview.com