Bush Does Europe Incognito

Bush Does Europe Incognito

By ROGER COHEN
Published: June 12, 2008


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

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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 U.S.A. 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 U.S. 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 E.U. president.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/opinion/12cohen.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

or that he'd be any different than Bush? We know he wouldn't run the show.. just another puppet.