Thumbs-up and a wink-and-a-nod to Bush the Negotiator. Bon-voyage! Time-traveling from new Europe (Warsaw), to old and new Russia (St Petersburg), to old Europe (Evian) and on to the ancient world (Middle East), the President is on a quest for good news to counter growing unease about the Iraqi imbroglio and intelligence community chicanery. By overplaying Warsaw and underplaying Evian, Bush is blatantly enforcing the friend/foe mentality so beloved of the hip-Straussians.

 

Hazing the French is just fun for the former frat president. Yale be proud.

 

New era diplomacy is energized by stark contrasts. This suits the Bush temperament. Not for him wimpy Clintonian detail and engagement. More the paternal pat-on-the-back from a hyperpower holding all the aces. Invincibility makes negotiating easy, as does fear.

 

In Crawford, visiting dignitaries are encouraged to line dance and it helps break the ice. Nothing like a captive audience. It’s unlikely Bush and Chirac will be seen swinging to the southern charms of Cotton-Eyed-Joe anytime soon. Maybe Abbas and Sharon can be persuaded. Cotton-Eyed-Joe diplomacy is esoteric.

       

The Mullahs of Iran are reporting increased chatter on the wires and wondering how the Houdini-like Syrians escaped the crosshairs. The sudden cancellation of White House Iranian policy talks this week has left the Teheran hardliners, and Washington hawks, fidgety. Quasi-almighty neocons, bent on radical geopolitical change to drain the swamp, shift their gunpoint at will, simultaneously roiling, destabilizing and exciting the natives.

 

Iranian and Iraqi Shiites make a potent religious and political cocktail and could easily tip the scales against Bremer the Third. Alleged Iranian links with Al Queda and her nuclear intentions are legitimate concerns but so is credibility on the world stage. Clear and present danger is not open to interpretation. Imminence brooks no ambiguity.

 

Ill-based preemption is on a roll; beware the bully on the block. And sometimes the neighborhood needs a bully to scatter the miscreants, so long as the bully knows when to stop and the miscreants know where to go.

 

Meanwhile, the Defense Secretary is rummaging for WMD under his bed. Any wonder Jim Carey is almighty at the box office.

 

Current bete-noire of the effete NRA, Michael Powell, chairman of the FCC, is on the horns of a dilemma. Daddy-do, daddy-don’t. Taxpayer airways are up for grabs and Powell junior is an innocent abroad.

Proliferation of information sources appears to render FCC deliberations meaningless. Homogeneity already exists and it isn’t clear Monday’s meeting can inflict any more blandness. Secrecy surrounds the exact wording of the agenda, as if to underscore the point.

Fair reporting is instinctively recognizable and a few stations could do the job. But fair reporting and investigative journalism aren’t on Monday’s agenda.      

10:56:52 AM