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 eceiving
the news, while traveling abroad, of George W.'s deportment is scandalously
exhilarating. The abasements of his predecessor, in his contacts
overseas, is simply gone. Mr. Clinton was so steeply mired in ambivalence,
it became hard for him to say anything endearing about the United
States, except to the extent that he identified the United States
with its 42nd president, himself. A trip through Africa guaranteed
that Mr. Clinton would spend time deploring all the terrible things
the United States did to Africa in centuries gone by, often recited
to assemblies whose reveries are for life in America, in exchange
for the lives most Africans have endured since the blight of decolonization.
When Mr. Bush announced that the war in Afghanistan was not over,
inasmuch as the enemy did, not by any means all of it, reside in
Afghanistan, a cosmopolitan prince in this part of the world (Switzerland)
observed that the American president needs to "prove"
that there is more to do in such as Iraq before he can reasonably
proceed on the assumption that Europe will endorse his activity.
George Bush's way of handling problems like this is to say he is
surprised that Europeans spend what would seem inordinate time worrying
about U.S. forces tracking down terrorists, rather than about terrorists
being tracked down by U.S. forces.
What is observable, in conversation with Europeans, and in some
of their press, is the evanescence of their indignation. Usually
they get mad, we apologize, they get madder because we didn't apologize
sufficiently, then U.S. engines of criticism get mad because the
U.S. got into such a mess. It was so when we bombed the Chinese
embassy in Belgrade. The more we apologized, the madder the Chinese
Reds got. When last year a Chinese fighter jet diddled with one
of our patrol planes and crashed into the sea, and our wounded aircraft
landed in Chinese territory, there was the expected caterwaul from
Peking. Mr. Bush's statement struck some as a bit too craven, given
that our people were patrolling the skies in freedom-of-the-seas
exercises, while the Chinese interloper was aggressive and suicidal.
But we got our pilots and plane back, and Mr. Bush seems to have
learned from his near brush with diplomatic servility.
Has that changed! He is breathing the same air that Ronald
Reagan breathed when he gave attention to the Evil Empire. One wishes
one had been there in a White House closet when Reagan scratched
those words into the speech and handed it up to the chain of detoxifiers,
getting back an etiolated version, into which he calmly, but decisively,
reinserted the Evil Empire phrase, whereafter it sounded out and
lives happily forever in the airwaves of hygienic diplomatic thought.
Now President Bush has gone to Asia and there is no trace, no trace
whatever, of any wish to modify the charge in his State of
the Union address that something he calls the axis of evil binds
Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The dumb leader of North Korea is struck
dumber still by the focus Mr. Bush has given to the regime he inherited
from his evil father. What they have in North Korea is starvation
and isolation and terror and the makings of an atom bomb. That Mr.
Bush should be reticent about drawing attention to the septic fruit
of 50 years of the Kim rulers is something that, well, kind of goes
against the grain of W.
And he goes to Japan with headlines like, "Bush Urges Japan
/ To Spur Economy." That kind of thing is thought to be the
equivalent of telling the queen to watch her grammar. But of course
it isn't so. What is so is that the failure of Japan, Inc., over
the past ten years has immobilized Japan, and demoralized trading
partners in Asia for whom the growth and ability of the Japanese
economy have been a great bulwark against lost confidence in the
free market approach to social order.
So what will the president say, by way of counseling Prime Minister
Koizumi? A mandarin nicety might be for the president to spend 20
minutes on what was done wrong by Enron, applying the lessons to
Japan: hoked-up relations with banks, carrying bad credit to inordinate
lengths, declining to privatize sick federal industries.
Mr. Bush knows the basic postulates of successful free systems.
You reward industry with low taxes and minimum regulations, and
you encourage education, strike out against sclerosis in labor markets,
and welcome free trade.
Mr. Bush doesn't mind it at all to be thought of as looking occasionally
like Forrest Gump. He is speaking the truth, and lending to the
elaboration of the truth the character he has brought to the presidency.
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