What Others Think

Australia

SYDNEY, NSW, is a long way from Washington DC but, even at this distance, it is clear that the Bush Administration is falling to pieces. In recent weeks, scanning the political coverage in the mainstream US media and sampling the blogs has been to watch a flood tide ebbing to reveal a rotting, skeletal hulk. It is the George W. Bush ship of fools, stuck in the mud for the world to see in all its mendacity, its incompetence, its faith-based stupidity.

It is possible, at this late stage, that even Bush himself has begun to realize something is wrong. That oddly simian face is ashen, the eyes leaden. The voice is shrill and its tone defensive.

"I'm the decider and I decide what's best," he squawked to reporters in the White House rose garden the other day, as the screws turned tighter on his disastrous Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Can you imagine Roosevelt, Eisenhower or Kennedy blurting something like that?

Germany

In public, Chancellor Merkel has spoken warmly about the Bush administration and stated her intention to improve trans-Atlantic relations that suffered under her predecessor Gerhard Schröder. But lately, the chancellor hasn't shied away from giving Washington critical advice about how to manage its foreign policy.

It wouldn't be surprising if United States President George W. Bush reached the conclusion that there are two Angela Merkels. One appears on television and speaks ceremoniously about improving the trans-Atlantic relations that took such a beating under her predecessor.....The other Angela Merkel is more brash and demanding. That's how the president experiences her during their almost weekly telephone conversations. And soon, Merkel will visit him in the White House for the second time during her still brief chancellorship.

She has a lengthy wish list, and it's getting longer by the day. Merkel is demanding changes in Washington's policies towards Iran and Russia, and she's not happy with the president's lax treatment of nuclear power India, either. A week ago Monday, Bush and Merkel discussed the complexities of global politics for 35 minutes. The chancellor didn't hold back any advice -- not even veiled criticisms of US foreign policy.

Posted on The Human Stain