Transatlantic Politics

Excellent article from Peggy Noonan (former Reagan speechwriter and five-time bestselling author) on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal talking about the reasons behind middle America’s disenchantment with Bush and his subsequent spectacular fall in popularity:
 

America is in line at the airport. America has its shoes off, is carrying a rubberized bin, is going through a magnetometer. America is worried there is fungus on the floor after a million stockinged feet have walked on it. But America knows not to ask. America is guilty until proved innocent, and no one wants to draw undue attention. America left its ticket and passport in the jacket in the bin in the X-ray machine, and is admonished. America is embarrassed to have put one one-ounce moisturizer too many in the see-through bag. America is irritated that the TSA agent removed its mascara, opened it, put it to her nose, and smelled it. Why don’t you put it up your nose and see if it explodes? America thinks.

And, as always: Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government’s way of showing "fairness," of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? Our politicians congratulate themselves on this as we stand in line.

All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday. Another thing: It reduces the status of that ancestral arbiter and leader of society, the middle-aged woman. In the new fairness, she is treated like everyone, without respect, like the loud ruffian and the vulgar girl on the phone. The middle-aged woman is the one spread-eagled over there in the delicate shell beneath the removed jacket, praying nothing on her body goes beep and makes people look.

America makes it through security, gets to the gate, waits. The TV monitor is on. It is Wolf Blitzer. He is telling us with a voice of urgency of the Pennsylvania returns. But no one looks up. We are a nation of Willie Lomans, dragging our rollies through acres of airport, going through life with a suitcase and a slack jaw, trying to get home after a long day of meetings, of moving product.

No one in crowded gate 14 looks up to see what happened in Pennsylvania. No one. Wolf talks to the air. Gate 14 is small-town America, a mix, a group of people of all classes and races brought together and living in close proximity until the plane is called, and America knows what Samuel Johnson knew. "How small of all that human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause or cure."

Gate 14 doesn’t think any one of the candidates is going to make their lives better. Gate 14 will vote anyway, because they know they are the grownups of America and must play the role and do the job…

In Lubbock, Texas – Lubbock Comma Texas, the heart of Texas conservatism – they dislike President Bush. He has lost them. I was there and saw it. Confusion has been followed by frustration has turned into resentment, and this is huge. Everyone knows the president’s poll numbers are at historic lows, but if he is over in Lubbock, there is no place in this country that likes him. I made a speech and moved around and I was tough on him and no one – not one – defended or disagreed. I did the same in North Carolina recently, and again no defenders. I did the same in Fresno, Calif., and no defenders, not one.

He has left on-the-ground conservatives – the local right-winger, the town intellectual reading Burke and Kirk, the old Reagan committeewoman – feeling undefended, unrepresented and alone.

This will have impact down the road.

I finally understand the party nostalgia for Reagan. Everyone speaks of him now, but it wasn’t that way in 2000, or 1992, or 1996, or even ‘04.

I think it is a manifestation of dislike for and disappointment in Mr. Bush. It is a turning away that is a turning back. It is a looking back to conservatism when conservatism was clear, knew what it was, was grounded in the facts of the world.

The reasons for the quiet break with Mr. Bush: spending, they say first, growth in the power and size of government, Iraq. I imagine some of this: a fine and bitter conservative sense that he has never had to stand in his stockinged feet at the airport holding the bin, being harassed. He has never had to live in the world he helped make, the one where grandma’s hip replacement is setting off the beeper here and the child is crying there. And of course as a former president, with the entourage and the private jets, he never will. I bet conservatives don’t like it. I’m certain Gate 14 doesn’t.

 Bush has never been a favorite of this author.  However, the lack of leadership from the White House on a number of issues is astounding.  Think back to immigration, social security reform, campaign finance ‘reform’, education ‘reform’, an ill-informaed stimulus package that pushes us farther into debt, an inability to ratify various free trade agreements, aging infrastructure here at home while we spend BILLIONS in Iraq, the ethanol boondoggle/vote buying scheme, etc. etc.  Add to this the ridiculous treatment all Americans are subjected to on a daily basis at the airport as a result of Bush’s creation of the Department of Homeland Security (incl. the 30,000+ new federal workers that were added so that we could all be ’safer’).

A continued crisis of leadership from both sides of the political aisle has America headed in the wrong direction.

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In another example of a nanny state out of control or the overwhelming influx into the U.S. of illegal Hispanics who don’t speak English (you choose, this story touches on both of those nerves), we have American firefighters in Oregon who are being demoted or fired simply because they don’t speak Spanish. 

The State of Oregon requires firefighter crew leaders to be able to communicate with every crew member, therefore, if one firefighter speaks only Spanish the crew leader is required by the State of Oregon to speak Spanish.  Those who don’t are losing their jobs or being demoted.  After all, what is most important to the State of Oregon is not the fact that the fires need to be put out or that most likely those who speak only Spanish are in the U.S. illegally.  No, what is important is that they be able to communicate.  Repeat after me until we all believe it: "Government knows best, government knows best"… 

Why all firefighters aren’t required to speak English is beyond me:

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Bucharest, Romania:  The final fronteer.

It was the first NATO summit where the US failed to get what it publicly asked for - granting Ukraine and Georgia a next step in the NATO-accession process, the so-called "Membership Action Plan" or MAP.  MAP does not mean automatic NATO membership and can take 5-10 years to complete because the requirements laid out in MAP are dependent on the reformist drive of the respective governments. In the battle over whether to grant MAP to Ukraine & Georgia, French President Sarkozy, whom Bush qualified as "the last reincarnation of Elvis", suddenly switched sides and joined the opposition led by German chancellor Angela Merkel, who was against MAP from the very beginning.

After bitter quarrels at a working dinner hosted by the Romanian president Traian Basescu, the leaders of Old Europe prevailed. Bush and Brown got a measly compromise - a second chance in December, when NATO foreign ministers could decide to give MAP to the two former Soviet countries. But German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier already qualified as "unconceivable" the prospects of changing his mind by December, when, in his view, there will only be a "first assessment". Followed by a second, third, etc. until Ukrainians and Georgians give up hope of ever joining NATO.

The real winner of the NATO summit in Bucharest was none other than Vladimir Putin. It was he who delivered the final speech on the last day of the summit, it was he whom Germany and France were thinking of as these two stalwarts of "Old Europe" fought to keep Georgia and Ukraine out of NATO. Self-confident and pleased that "our concerns were heard", Putin gave the audience at the Summit a condescending discourse which seemed as if the West was already at his disposal and he, the "Tsar of the Kremlin" didn’t feel the need to bully his loyal servants.  If the result of the NATO Summit are any indication, Putin was right.

During the closed-door NATO-Russia Council in Bucharest, Putin threatened the statehood of Ukraine in the event that it would become a NATO member.  Putin noted that "there are 17 millions Russians there" and that "Ukraine is a patchwork of territories from other states". But in the following press conference he refrained himself form directly attacking Ukraine or Georgia. The argument against NATO enlargement, in Putin’s public speech, was that "NATO is not a democratizer", but "a powerful military block whose appearance on our borders will be considered by Russia as a direct threat to our country’s security.

He also stressed that no threat - from terrorism to proliferation of WMD, from cyber attacks to energy - can be tackled without Russia. NATO was set up during the Cold War against an "evil empire" - the USSR - "but it remains to be seen who was right then", Putin said. That statement alone should set off alarm bells among military strategists and historians throughout the West. 

Putin also mentioned Iran and that, although Russia opposes a military nuclear program, it is "fully committed to honor its contractual obligations in terms of civilian technology and fuel for the civilian Iranian nuclear program".  No comment.

So what will be the future of NATO after Bucharest, after Russia got a veto right through its advocates in the NATO Alliance, especially Germany?

Hopefully Russia will make another mistake, the way it cut off gas to Ukraine in 2006 and let German consumers shiver. And hopefully we’ll have a strong leader in the White House next year. One who knows Russia from the Cold War and sees the new threat it has become. One who doesn’t look Putin or Medvedev in the eyes and thinks he has "seen into their soul", as George W. Bush famously stated after meeting with Putin. That would be the only hope for the transatlantic community. It cannot rely on a reincarnation of Elvis in France and a jello-like chancellor in Germany, too weak to break the will of her half-socialist, pro-Russian government. 

It is a sad indication of where the power truly lies in Europe when Bush and Sarkozy, both hawkish on foreign policy in general, are not able to secure the nomination of two former Soviet satellites to one of the most important military blocs in the world.  Perhaps, in the end, Putin smiles because he knows the truth:  Putin has also looked into the West’s eyes to see its soul and has found that the West is lacking both a soul and a backbone. 

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