Posted on 06/01/2003 7:42:05 PM PDT by blam
A stiff handshake, a tense smile but no invitation to the Texas ranch for Chirac
Bush gets a helping hand from Old Europe
Michael White
Monday June 2, 2003
The Guardian (UK)
George Bush and Jacques Chirac, current holders of the two most powerful executive presidencies in the world, finally managed to shake hands yesterday after their war of words over the conflict in Iraq. They hadn't quite managed it at the junket which the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, organised to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg. Mr Chirac had to leave early to host his own summit; Mr Bush arrived late.
These things happen.
But yesterday it became unavoidable. As the man running the G8 jamboree at Evian on the heavily policed Lake Geneva, the president of France had to greet the president of the United States.
Mr Bush duly got his handshake, a stiff one by all accounts, and there was a tense exchange of smiles. Other leaders did rather better from the Gallic glad-hander whose ability to work a crowd has kept him in high office since the days when Mr Bush was a Texan tearaway with a very Anglo-Saxon drink problem.
In a field of diplomacy notorious for accidental or deliberate snubs - that of official gifts - Mr Bush gave Mr Chirac some leather-bound volumes on Native American culture. The topic is a long-standing private interest of the French president, though seen from a Texan perspective Mr Chirac may wonder if he is due for a scalping.
The two men are due to have a 20-minute meeting - 30 minutes according to upbeat versions - in the margins of the summit today. It isn't a great deal by top-table standards, certainly not by Tony Blair's, or even Mr Putin's.
At St Petersburg the Russian leader, who ended up in tactical alliance with France and Germany in opposing the Iraq war, got the Texan back-slapping treatment and was referred to as "my good friend" by George W.
Mr Putin, who did not overplay his hand as Mr Chirac had, told a joint press conference: "I must say that the fundamentals between the United States and Russia turned out to be stronger than the forces and events that tested it."
In reality, all G8 leaders must work together whether they love or hate each other, though love works better.
Mr Chirac cannot expect to be invited to the Texas ranch any time soon, as Mr Putin was. This may be seen as a blessing in disguise. Texan cuisine is robust rather than haute. And its red wine is still in the early stages of development.
Incredible. :o(
It's just as well. President Bush would probably just get aggravated trying to keep Chirac's snails from falling through the barbecue grid.
Typical Euroweasel scat. This little sh*t has probably never tried Llano-Estacado Merlot. It's damned good.
Say what?
Michael White, you too are delusional.
The French I can understand but an Englishman?
I can see France no closer than #8.
#2???
yeah... right.
These slugs at The Guardian cannot bear the fact that President Bush is the greatest statesman since Winston Churchill and the greatest American president since Lincoln.
They love to pretend that he is an ignorant cowboy, and they intentionally ignore the truth: that President Bush is a worldly wise, highly intelligent, sophisticated aristocrat, of royal blood and of impeccable integrity, with an ivy league eduction, who has surrounded himself with the most intelligent and best educated advisors in American presidential history.
The truth about George W. Bush is so subversive to the decadent, mendacious Left that Leftists have invented a "bumbling cowboy dancing on the strings of his advisors" persona in an attempt to neutralize the threat that he poses to them and all that they stand for.
It won't work.
Truth comes out. And it's always painful to the decadent Left.
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