Friday, June 13, 2008

Bush Tours Europe - And NO One Cares

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Europe is giving Bush the Cold Shoulder, ....it's Pay Back time for Bush. They ridicule Bush's Intellect.  Bush's chip-on-the-shoulder temperament is another matter. He has proved mean, vindictive, surly, controlling and impatient, as befits his guns-at-the-ready gait.

 

There's nothing worse than a control-freak chief executive with no interest in details like the disbanding of the Iraqi Army or the strength of New Orleans levees.

 

They tired of Bush's brittle bravado, and deficiency of temperament. Nobody's been itching to present Bush with a diplomatic triumph,

An ungenerous temperament does not inspire generosity

 

Bush Does Europe Incognito

 

Spiegel OnLine

From The New York Times 

Roger Cohen

June 12, 2008

An American president is in Europe and nobody cares. That's a moment.

Of course, a couple of months ago an American president went to a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, and said Georgia and Ukraine should be on a fast track to membership, and nobody listened. That was a moment, too. Last time I checked, NATO without the United States didn't amount to squat.

The president had choreographed his Bucharest appearance with a prior stop in the Ukrainian capital. Did his NATO allies care that he would lose face? Nope. I care because, like this president, I think Georgia and Ukraine should join NATO as soon as possible. Lock in liberal systems where you can.

But that's not my subject here.

The American president, of course, is George W. Bush. He's doing a farewell lap, or limp, around European capitals, or retreats. His German stop has been in downtown Meseberg. A rapturous Berlin welcome was not assured.

Rome, Paris, London -- an itinerary to stir the imagination, but never his. That's been the thing about Bush: no curiosity. "Russia's big, and so is China," he opined in 2006. The insights tended to stop there. He's probably happier at Schloss Meseberg, a kind of German Crawford.

"Ich bin ein Crawforder". Has a ring to it, even if it's as meaningless as this exit tour.

But Bush-bashing has become a bore. I won't indulge in it, except to say one more thing.

US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. described President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "a second-class intellect but a first-rate temperament." Bush's endless malapropisms have made his intellect the object of ridicule. But his mind was not the problem. It's a better mind than his "nukelar" trashing of language suggests.

Bush's chip-on-the-shoulder temperament is another matter. He has proved mean, vindictive, surly, controlling and impatient, as befits his guns-at-the-ready gait. Apologizing for tough-guy rhetoric now, as he has, is no remedy. There's nothing worse than a control-freak chief executive with no interest in details like the disbanding of the Iraqi Army or the strength of New Orleans levees.

This deficiency of temperament has been devastating. America's leader must still inspire and give hope. The USA is the last ideological country on earth. If its message doesn't resonate, big issues go unaddressed. When it's dusk in America, the shadows spread wide.

This desultory stroll around a Europe more focused on his successor is a reflection the damage a flawed temperament has done to trans-Atlantic ties. Europeans got tired of being scowled at.

In selecting Barack Obama and John McCain as the Democratic and Republican candidates, respectively, Americans have chosen men in full, unafraid to betray contradictions. They are tired of brittle bravado. With Bush, they have seen that, after a certain age, you get the face you deserve.

So Bush goes not with a bang, but a whimper. That's not just about him. Europe and America need each other less in a changed world. Europeans have less need to bow and scrape when a US leader arrives. Their continent is whole and free.

For the United States, fast-developing relationships -- with China, India, Brazil -- and the challenges of the Middle East loom larger than puzzling out what clout some treaty might one day give an EU president.

Still, a lesson of the Bush presidency has been that trans-Atlantic cooperation matters. Its absence in Iraq has been disastrous. Its unevenness in Afghanistan has been costly. Its wooliness over Iran has been unproductive.

Bush, in Kranj, Slovenia, said at the start of his European tour that Iran "can either face isolation, or they can have better relations with all of us if they verifiably suspend their enrichment program." That's a tired theme. The joint statement with European leaders on Iran could have been issued any time in the last several years.

Let's face it, now that the curtain's almost down, nobody's been itching to present Bush with a diplomatic triumph, whether in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel-Palestine. An ungenerous temperament does not inspire generosity. It's time for some fresh thinking, but above all a fresh spirit, a fresh temperament.

Just before Bush showed up in Europe, I was on a panel with Robert Boorstin, a senior Google executive. He didn't talk about Iran. He talked about the world's 1.4 billion Internet users and the way that number's growing by 250 million a year.

He talked about the 10 hours of video being uploaded on YouTube every minute of every day. He talked about the world?s 3 billion mobile devices, with another billion coming in the next three years. He described the "largest increase in expressive capability in the history of the human race"

Connectivity: pass it on. We need an American president who embodies it, in Berlin and, eventually, in downtown Tehran.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,559222,00.html

 

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