American president's popularity spans globe
Mobile Register ^ | Tuesday, May 17, 2005
In a foreign country the other day, a throng of people, chanting slogans and waving flags, awaited President George W. Bush.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters, right? People angry at American aggressiveness and arrogance, no doubt. World citizens who think Mr. Bush is a reckless cowboy, too simplistic, his thought too little nuanced, his pronouncements too unmodulated for this complex, modern world.
After all, isn't that what American elites have been telling us for years, now: that the Bush foreign policy is making the United States into the world's pariah?
The elites were wrong again.
The Bush visit occurred in formerly Soviet Georgia. The crowd, variously estimated from 100,000 to 300,000, wasn't protesting; it was cheering. The rippling flags were both Georgian and American, held aloft together, waved with pride and joy.
Similar enthusiasm had greeted President Bush in Latvia a few days earlier. And the United States in general is equally popular, reportedly, throughout eastern Europe and western Asia -- places where Mr. Bush's encomiums to freedom have stirred not only hearts, but action.
Just two years ago, Georgia was ruled by a regime that was mildly pro-Western, but corrupt and authoritarian. Now, after its bloodless "Rose Revolution," Georgia is led by Mikhail Saakashvili, a progressive, American-educated 37-year-old with an unabashed fondness for the United States.
Mr. Saakashvili's ascension in Georgia presaged similarly successful outbursts of freedom -- all of them popularly known by slogans involving a color or a plant -- in other countries in that region.
"Before there was a Purple Revolution in Iraq," said President Bush in his speech in the republic of Georgia, "or an Orange Revolution in Ukraine or a Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, there was the Rose Revolution in Georgia.
"Now across the Caucasus, in central Asia and the broader Middle East, we see this same desire of liberty burning in the hearts of young people. They are demanding their freedom, and they will have it."
President Bush is correct. Freedom is contagious. Constitutional democracy and free enterprise, under the rule of law, is overwhelmingly popular. And the United States is seen as a model and a mentor -- and, more than that, a hero for tens of millions of people taking their first taste of liberty's elixir.
Much of the credit, of course, should go to President Bush and to his team of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and others. The sudden upsurge of democracy movements was clearly catalyzed by their efforts.
But in a larger sense the credit goes to generations of American soldiers and American leaders who have modeled democracy, and shed blood for it. Ronald Reagan and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bob Dole and Harry Truman, and union leaders like George Meany: All stood tall when freedom called.
People in Georgia and Latvia know it; people in Poland and Ukraine know it; people know it throughout the world. Americans aren't the world's pariahs. We're the world's best friend.
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