Decency, Compassion, and the European Press

Just as the President's Secretary of State seemed to think that the best time to talk to the press was on her flight to Spain prior to its landing, the President himself decided to face the European press prior to his departure. This latter briefing has been covered for the Financial Times by Andrew Ward, who provided his readers with an interesting lead:

When President George W. Bush met European reporters ahead of his six-nation visit to the continent this week, his most telling comment came in response to a question on how he hoped to be perceived by Bulgarians during his stop in Sofia.

“I want them to meet ... a person who represents a nation of decent, compassionate people,” he said. “I represent a country that really cares deeply about the human condition.”

Mr. Ward did not report on why Bush was visiting the sites on his itinerary other than Heiligendamm, the site of the G8 meeting, or, for that matter, why this particular briefing chose to focus on Sofia. Nevertheless, there is a lot to be read in that brief quotation, much of which probably had little, if anything, to do with the President's intentions.

Europeans seem to have a habit of following the news far more closely than we do; and, if anything, the Iraq affair may have drawn their attention to the White House more than in the past. Consequently, the average Bulgarian is likely to know more about the President's standing in the polls than, say, the average viewer of Fox news. Thus Bulgarians would probably see the decency and compassion of the American people as those people chose to express themselves in both last November's election and what they tell those polls about their opinion of their President. With that as background Bulgarians are not likely to be as snookered by our President as we were in the last two Presidential elections. As to any care "about the human condition," they have the resources to judge our President on his deeds (such as expanding one of his air bases that happens to be near the homes of the "decent, compassionate people" of Italy) rather than his words.

So what is it that President Bush thinks he is doing? By all rights he should be preparing for productive conversations with his G8 colleagues, rather than trying to fish for a general mandate from the "folks" of Europe as a justification for his usual bully tactics. He is likely to have to face some rather stiff challenges; and those challenges are likely to be grounded in reason, rather than faith. Does he really think he can "sell a new image" by "rehearsing" it in Sofia? The rest of the G8 now embodies a rather broad spectrum of political and economic philosophies, but all the other members seem disposed to deal with their differences through conversation? Can our President engage on this playing field, or is he just trying to build up new reinforcements for his usual practice of trying to reduce everything to his personal conceptions of right and wrong?