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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrLucky who wrote (254366)	6/13/2008 11:54:57 PM
From: puborectalis	Respond to of 793719

Legacy is a word over which Bush's aides profess not to dwell, and the president himself seems averse to reflection. "The president does not have second thoughts," his press secretary, Dana Perino, once said. But his legacy hangs over his eight-day visit to Europe nonetheless - in interviews he has given to foreign journalists, in his friendships with European leaders, in his appearance Thursday night with Berlusconi when he had to respond to the U.S. Supreme Court's rebuke on the Guantánamo Bay prison, which remains an unredeemable blemish for many in Europe and beyond. "The guy said, 'Now what could you do over?"' Bush said in Meseberg, Germany, when asked about remarks he made in an interview with The Times of London expressing some of the words that have earned him his reputation as a reckless cowboy: Dead or alive, bring it on, and so on. "First of all, you don't get to do things over in my line of work," Bush went on. "But I could have used better rhetoric to indicate that, one, we tried to exhaust the diplomacy in Iraq; two, that I don't like war." The war in Iraq, of course, did more to strain relations between the United States and Europe - not to mention the United States and the Muslim world - than any issue since Ronald Reagan deployed intermediate missiles in Europe in 1984 during the height of the Cold War. As a result, he remains deeply unpopular in Europe, as at home. It was clear, though, that he has repaired at least some of the damage, judging by the evident warmth with which the leaders greeted him and the comparative fizzle of protests that convulsed previous visits. In a speech in Paris on Friday, Bush extolled the shared history and shared values of the United States and Europe, recalling the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, which helped to rebuild the Continent after World War II, and referring to the spread of democracies to countries once oppressed by Soviet power "over the last eight years," even if that spread began well before he assumed office. "In leaders like Berlusconi and Brown and Merkel and Sarkozy, I see a commitment to a powerful and purposeful Europe that advances the values of liberty within its borders, and beyond," he said, also referring to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. "And when the time comes to welcome the new American president next January," he went on, "I will be pleased to report to him that the relationship between the United States and Europe is the broadest and most vibrant it has ever been." None of this looking-ahead suggests that, with barely seven months to go, Bush has thrown in the towel. On the contrary, he has an ambitious agenda that involves the most pressing and intractable international issues of the day: peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, resolving the confrontations with North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs. On an issue that consumes Europe far more than it did his administration, Bush even pledged this week to negotiate a binding international agreement this year that would address global warming by including all the world's major polluters, including China and India. He preemptively answered a question directed at Prime Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia that looked ahead to the possibility of an agreement "in the following years" - that is, under a President John McCain or President Barack Obama.