Bush must decide whether he is ready to be a Bismarck

[emad]

What is needed is a shift from shock and awe to reassurance

Martin Kettle in Brussels
Tuesday February 22, 2005
The Guardian

Like him or not, Doug Wead reflected to reporters at the weekend, George Bush was going to be "a huge historical figure". It was therefore legitimate, Wead thought, to release secret tapes he had made of his old friend's private conversations. Whether Wead, a former aide to the first president Bush, was right or wrong about that is a separate issue, though I'm certainly glad he's not my friend. But he was spot on about one thing. Bush is a big figure all right.

Watching and listening to Bush in Brussels yesterday it was impossible not to see that this is a very different politician from the one who was taped by Wead as he weighed his first run for the White House in the late 1990s. "It's me versus the world," the Texas governor told Wead then. "The good news is, the world is on my side. Or more than half of it anyway." That cockiness, so irksome to so many for so long, and so destructive, is gone now, or is perhaps more skilfully concealed. In any event, there was a new maturity about Bush yesterday which we deny at our peril.

Let's admit the limitations of yesterday's speech straight away. In 32 minutes, Bush covered more than a dozen difficult world and regional issues. Some of what he said about some of those issues was pretty perfunctory, inevitable in such a wide-ranging, almost scatter-gun, address. There was not much on Africa, and barely a mention of Asia. The section on Afghanistan was thin.

Much of what he did say was held together by constructive ambiguity. In the meatiest section of the speech, the part dealing with the Middle East, Bush's clear willingness to engage and to encourage others to engage - important changes of position - was vitiated by the number of conditions, spoken and unspoken, that he clearly attaches to the US's own role. Of the three most difficult issues between the US and Europe highlighted by Peter Mandelson in an interview yesterday - Iran, China and Nato - Bush addressed only the first.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1419922,00.html

[maxsolomon]

1. i hate to see the guardian give bush an inch.

<there was a new maturity about Bush yesterday which we deny at our peril.>

WTF? do the british not understand what a smirking power-mad frat boy looks like? c'mon, guardian, you owe him nothing!

[emad]

2. See "Charm and seduction among the chandeliers":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1419920,00.html
Snip:
George Bush will never be a great orator. The gestures and grimaces are too often too hard to square with the immensity of his power.And at times it became apparent he was not on home turf when applause lines that would have gone down well back in the US fell flat in front of his European audience. But he is a far better speaker than his most implacable detractors allow. And this speech was one by a politician at the top of his game. It was like listening to Caesar reviewing the condition of the Roman empire - daunting but irresistible.

At times it seemed as if Mr Bush was going to say something about every single country in the world. One moment he was reprimanding the Dutch for their racial violence, the next he was slipping in a compliment to Morocco for its embrace of reform. But it was the Middle East that was at the heart of this speech. When he called for a Palestinian state "with contiguous territory on the West Bank" and declared that a state of "scattered territories" would not work the applause was loud and heartfelt.

Afterwards the verdict was positive in the hall. Charmed? Certainly. Seduced? They liked the thought. But a partner for life? Let's see how it feels in the morning.