PERSPECTIVES - Irreconcilable Differences?
October 12, 2003 - The Chicago Tribune
Though few in Europe could tell you the name of any candidate who might run against George W. Bush in next year’s U.S. presidential elections, it would be just as difficult to find a European citizen who supports the incumbent. A second serving of the current president may be more than “old Europe” is ready to stomach; many here are looking at the 2004 choice as a tipping point that will define the future of trans-Atlantic relations.
If there was any lingering doubt as to whether anti-Bush sentiment softened in recent months, the answer might lie on the cover of the Sept. 1 issue of left-leaning French magazine Marianne, which asks, “Is the United States still a democracy?” next to a caricature of Uncle Sam extending his middle finger at the reader.
“There is a thin margin between ‘anti-Bush’ and ‘anti-American’ right now—this is a dangerous thing,” said Gilles Delafon, co-author of “Dear Jacques, Cher Bill,” a chronicle of French-American relations under Presidents Jacques Chirac and Bill Clinton.
“I would not be surprised if we switch back to a fascination with America if Bush is not re-elected,” said Delafon, who is also foreign editor of a French Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche.
The all-enveloping anti-Americanism actually tends to be acutely focused on the Texan at the Top and his foreign policy team. If “Baby Bush,” as Europeans like to call him, went away in 2005, so would the lion’s share of Europe’s hotly simmering sentiment.
Europeans are still flummoxed by how Bush was elected, but they have been willing to chalk it up as a fluke; an electorate aligning itself with him for four more years, however, may widen their scope of ire from the president and his team to the country as a whole.
But if Bush lost his office?
“Champagne!” exclaimed Delafon. “We’re at odds with our traditional allies, and everyone is asking, ‘What went wrong?’ People will be so relieved, the president-elect won’t have to do a thing.”
Seen from Europe, the Bush presidency has been a series of disasters.
Public reason makes that clear.
Asked about what Europeans would like to see from the 2005-08 president, Spanish architect Jordi Carreno said, “A little bit of humility and cooperation in those items that the rest of the world cares about like global warming, globalization, and responsibility toward the UN.”
Humility comes up again with Iceland native Snorri Sturluson, an art director for an advertising agency in New York. The next president should “mind his or her own business—the business of the U.S., inside the U.S.—and stop playing world police,” Sturluson said.
Diplomatic slaps
Among other issues, withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, rebuffing the International Criminal Court, largely ignored international offers of help after Sept. 11, and the derailment of the Middle East peace process have been diplomatic slaps in the face to traditional European allies, particularly those lumped into “old Europe.”
Iraq was the last nail in the coffin.
“I’ve always been doubtful of [Bush’s] political skills, but during and after the Iraq war, I really realized how bad he was. He did, and he’s still doing, all the wrong things to do in that situation,” said Giuliano Anselmo, an Italian hedge fund manager.
“Bring Back Monica Lewinsky” T-shirts have even shown up on the streets of Paris, worn by Europeans longing for the relatively halcyon days of a sex scandal.
“French public opinion is either Kennedy, Reagan or Clinton, and that’s not the case with George W. Bush,” said Delafon, referring to three modern presidents whose terms in office were seen as trans-Atlantic belles epoques.
“They want to see a president they can like—not a Carter, not a Bush,” Delafon said.
A re-election also may harden trans-Atlantic trends that are far more unsettling for Bush than are the reactions to his charisma and choice of foreign policy team.
Though the goal of a European superpower is more openly economic than military, Europeans have warmed to the augmenting of both facets since Bush took office.
“The political-cultural milieu that George W. Bush comes from is completely foreign to a number of Europeans,” Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger wrote last month in an article for Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
But Frankenberger goes on to look at a survey released by the German Marshall Fund on Sept. 4 that shows Americans and Europeans sharing similar global concerns yet increasingly at odds with each other.
Drop in support
The survey shows a sharp drop in European support for a “strong U.S. presence in the world,” with support falling to 45 percent from 64 percent a year earlier.
Broken down by country, the poll shows that “majorities in France (70 percent), Germany (50 percent) and Italy (50 percent) believe global U.S. leadership is ‘undesirable.’”
On the other side of the coin, 71 percent of Europeans surveyed said they now would like to see Europe emerge as a superpower.
Carreno echoes this sentiment; the president in office from 2005 to 2008 should “start thinking about Europe as one country, go and deal with the European Parliament in Brussels and not with every country’s president.”
Alain Madelin, a French parliamentarian, former finance minister and one of the few French politicians to occasionally defend the Bush administration, takes a different view.
“The need for Iraqi sovereignty is indisputable,” Madelin said. Staying the course, not an election, would assuage trans-Atlantic tensions, and “if George Bush continues as he’s doing, relations will actually get better.”
After the 2004 elections? “I hope either Bush will be able to keep it up or his successor will be able to do so.”
‘Age of darkness?’
So, to answer the magazine’s front-page question, is the United States still a democracy?
“Yes,” begins the editorial by Marianne’s director, Jean-Francois Kahn, “the United States is still a great democracy.”
Cover story author Eric Dior confirms this in his piece, “Do we conclude that the United States has truly entered a new age of darkness, comparable to the surge of McCarthyism? This would certainly be excessive.”
Depending on how things go in the presidential election of November 2004, however, European minds could change on that question.
