Posted on 08/30/2004 4:13:24 PM PDT by Pokey78
According to The Sunday Telegraph, "Howard Tells Bush: I Don't Care If You Won't See Me". Presumably he didn't actually "tell" Bush, since his lack of access to the guy is what this thing's all about.
"Face time" they used to call it in Bill Clinton's day. So Bush is probably unaware that Howard doesn't care if he won't see him. By next Sunday we might be seeing headlines such as: "Furious Howard Slams Reeling Bush: I Don't Care If You Don't Know That I Don't Care If You Won't See Me".
But, despite the lively account in the Sun, I very much doubt Karl Rove told Michael Howard: "You can forget about meeting the President full stop." More likely he told him: "You can forget about meeting the President, period."
If you're going to leak highly confidential conversations, it helps not to make the poor chap sound like a character in one of Martin Amis's sad, trying-to-sound-American novels. We are, as has been noted, two nations separated by a common language.
Take - to pluck at random - the word "conservative". In America, "conservative" has certain common meanings: devotees of small government, gun nuts, fiscal hawks, anti-abortion groups, the religious Right. Bush is a problematic figure for several of these constituencies, but all of them are numerous and indispensable to the election prospects of the President, senators, governors, congressmen and state legislators.
Now turn to Britain. What does "conservative" mean? There's no religious Right or pro-life groups, not much social conservatism at all, and, if there was, the Tory leadership would recoil from it lest they offend shortlisted gay candidates with safe seats. There are no gun nuts, because the party has a rather unpleasant authoritarian bent and has traditionally eschewed the Englishman's-home-is-his-castle stuff in favour of a knee-jerk deference to the monumentally useless British constabulary. (Howard's time as Home Secretary makes an instructive study in this regard.)
As for fiscal conservatism and small government, the Tories are against "waste" and in favour of "choice", but so's everybody else, at least rhetorically.
So what does "conservative" mean in British English? If you look it up in the OED, does it say "obs."? Last-known citation, by Toby Helm in The Daily Telegraph, August 7, 2004: "Senior members of Michael Howard's frontbench team believe the Conservative Party will have to consider changing its name as part of a fundamental `rebranding'."
Whoa, not so fast. Despite the great gaping nullity of the party this past decade, there was still one thing it stood for: like the Republicans, the Tories were the party that took foreign policy and national security seriously. That's what Howard threw away when he chose to repudiate his own Iraq-war vote, accuse Blair of "dereliction of duty" and demand his resignation.
In America, plenty of old-school "realist" Republicans were sceptical of the war. So were various self-important Brits, on the grounds that the blundering Yanks just don't understand the natives the way we old colonial hands do - an argument that would be more persuasive if so many of the trouble spots currently requiring America's attention weren't assisted on their path to chronic dysfunctionalism by the wise old birds of British imperialism (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan).
But Howard went further than either the realpolitik or snob crowd. For crudely opportunist reasons, he jumped in one swift move from bipartisan support of the Government in a time of war to bipartisan support of loony-Left sloganeering against the war.
He embraced in all but name the BLAIR LIED!! PEOPLE DIED!!! school of foreign policy. Granted, he's not the only Tory to have done so. I'm often asked by disbelieving Republicans these days if it's true about Britain's "Michael Moore Conservatives". Hard to disagree when I see my increasingly deranged chums at The Spectator are now calling for Blair's impeachment. This is frivolous and unworthy of a serious opposition.
If you look at all this from the White House's perspective, it's easy to see why the Administration has dismissed the Tories, according to the Sun, as "a bunch of wankers". At first glance this, too, is an unlikely formulation from Texan lips. But I'm prepared to believe that, if one expression from the Berlitz Guide to Useful Phrases about the British Conservative Party has crossed the Atlantic and penetrated the Oval Office, it's probably this one.
It's often said that, whoever's elected, the Anglo-American relationship endures: Bush-Blair, Kerry-Howard, it makes no difference. That's not how Bush looks at it. He sees the war on terror as a struggle requiring enormous will, particularly when the default mode of fashionable transnationalism apropos anything difficult is to wait till it's too late and then issue a statement of concern (see Sudan).
To Bush, Blair is a man who was prepared to face down his own party and some tough poll numbers to do the right thing. I'm not saying he thinks Howard's an unprincipled squish who reads the polls and does a U-turn just so he can join the pointless oppositionism of the Blair-bashing stampede but, if you were Bush, would you want to risk it?
The words of another Howard are pertinent here: "This is no time to be an 80 per cent ally," said Australia's John Howard after 9/11. What percentage would you place the Michael Howard Tories at?
The damage to Republican-Tory relationships isn't the point: after all, you can't build bridges when one bank is crumbling into the river. It's the damage to the Tory party's identity. When you stand for nothing saleable that New Labour hasn't shamelessly appropriated, and when new parties are siphoning off votes on your Right, how stupid do you have to be to kick away the party's last remaining leg, the one that still seems relevant to the world we live in? If the Conservatives are no longer credible on foreign policy, what's left?
Or, as Toby Helm reported: "Among the alternative names that Tory modernisers are floating in private are the Democrats, the New Democrats, Progress." The first is the name of the US Left-of-centre party, the second is the Canadian socialist party, and the third could be anything, though it carries the vague whiff of a 1930s Mitteleuropean fascist movement.
Given that the Tories' identity is notable mainly by its absence, wouldn't it be easiest just to change the name to the Not The Conservative Party?
Thanks for the ping!
BTTT. Thanks, Poke!
Good Stuff ~ Bump!
Ping
How goes you one-man mission to alienate as many allies or potential allies as possible?
Fool.
Mark hits it out of the park again.
My guess: he's referring to ancient_geezer, a FReeper who runs the Tax Reform pinglist. Very knowledgeable person.
It shouldn't take that long. The effects of American policy in Germany and Japan took less than 40 years to be evident.
1. Thank you for making my point;
2. Lighten up -- there is light and joy and love and enthusiasm in the world -- and, especially, there is humor -- even for Italian soccer-player-loving Limeys.
When all y'all emigrate.
Come on over!
Blessings -- Brian
I suppose I do need to change my screen name especially since the team I support is now relegated and shorn of all its good players that have f**ked off to Chelsea and T*ttenham and even Lazio...Of course, this is what you get for registering on FR just days after a certain Italian scores the goal that gives your team its first win over ManUre (Man Utd to the uninitiated) in 11 years...
I will of course emigrate to the U.S. just as soon as the Upton Park stadium is relocated there brick by brick.
Having said that, I suppose if they get into any more debt they will probably sell the stadium to the first gullible Yank that wonders by... after all, I recall one of your less bright fellow citizens once bought a bridge from us Brits some time ago....
p.s. re:Humour - you're seriously asking a West Ham fan if he has a sense of humour?
Also - yes, a certain ex- tabloid journalist member of this forum does still appear to be trolling around after all these years...
There you go -- I just knew we were on the same side!
West Ham rules -- it's bloody Fulham's wickedly-wanton wanker-wannabe wide-boys that be needin' close attention!
As for gullible Yanks, [The ones, that is not on the way to Mars and/or building Boeings, writing software, creating supercomputers and designing Bimmers, Merks, Bently, Rolls Royce, Jaguar, Range Rover, Aston Martin, Volvo, Toyoto, Honda and Lexus -- etceteras -- cars] -- I dunno if you've been paying much attention lately but most of those these days who are not Latinos and transported Poles and Micks talk like Yarpies and Ruinekkers or speak in Russian, in Bengali, in wolds 'n dales warbles, Cockney and Liverpudlian -- or in the mouth-fulla-marbles Cantonese accents of the formerly FRee British Citizens of Formerly-FRee-British Hong Kong!
Wotcha, Cock -- B A
Just as I know that you daily thank wise historical British military leadership for the fact you don't speak French today with its cultural consequence that you would regard John Kerry as far too right wing to ever be President. Also just as your almost routune ripping the sh*t out of Britain reassures us all that some Americans are simply in denial about their true desire to emigrate to the U.K. After all, you know what's said about those who protest too much..
p.s . the ones planning space missions and designing cars takes care of numbers in the thousands. Just how stupid are you suggesting the other 200 + million are then? And what is a traitor to the cause of the average American like that doing on a fine (nearly) all American forum such as this?
<< there's barely a day that goes by without my falling at the feet of the first American I find in London .... >>
Knocked down, no doubt by one of the cowled feral gangs of third world savages that rule a capital city whose mosques see around ten times more weekly attendees than does that city's "'Church' of England" pews -- and instinctively clawing at the feet of the representative of the only reason that city is not already lost to those hostile colonizers -- or worse, to invading Euro-peon mainlanders!
<< And what is a traitor to the cause of the average American like that doing on a fine (nearly) all American forum such as this? >>
I dunno.
Why don't you, any other hesperophobic ingrates you can round up -- and the Fulham freak -- whip up to the nearest mirror and ask yourselves?
As for the cheese-eating surrender monkeys it was their lot wot a couple hundred-odd years ago helped see off your ten-bob-in-the-quid bloody tyrant's murderous mercenaries when we whipped yours and their arses in the American War of Independence.
And talking about whipping arses, at the cost of enormous quantities of our beloved FRaternal republic's blood and treasure -- more than Twenty Trillion Dollars in just our "post war" waging and winning of the Cold War -- we've whipped yours and the frogs arses out of the fires into which your idiot-savant elitist 'leaders' have plunged them three times in the past 90 years and while we may not have saved you from speaking french and/or german and/or russian we have most certainly freed all y'all from the otherwise deserved fate of being made into soap, wallets and ashes at Adolf's slaughterhouses and crematoriums -- or borsht in the gulags. The penultimate time despite that the ego-bloody-maniacal little-boy-gobbling poofter, montgomery, entrusted with planning the detail of the Normandy landings just about rooted everything and everybody there by way of his failure to take that region's hedgerows into account -- and the consequential fact no-one could see the Hun even if his tanks were dug in a hundred yards away.
Why without US when the Argies Faulked with your last couple of islands they would have been the Malvinos!
Just -- had we not been there to once again do the dirty work for y'all -- as Once-FRee-British Hong Kong and its 7.5 million formerly FRee British Hong Kong Subjects would have been cravenly surrended into slavery at the hands of the Peking pack of predators.
Oh, I forgot.
We weren't -- and they were.
How's it go again?
Once great Egypt;
Once great Geece;
Once great Rome;
Once great Britain?
[Next?]
Take care! Be safe -- Be well -- Be happy -- B A!
Uh-oh, we seem to have run up to one Freeper showing classic symptoms of the syndrone described above. Search the response to see who that is. ;-)
BTW to the person who thinks Mark knows nothing about Britain, Mark also lives in London for at least 1/3 of a year.
Can you enlighten me please? :-)
p.s. as a Kiwi, I know you understand the phrase "taking the piss", which another poster on here doesn't given his response to my tongue in cheek #52.
BTW, BA does seem to have a bit of an issue with one country in particular...
Now stop it Brian, this level of flattery and complimenting is too much for a humble Brit to take. I do however do my best, and your recognition is much valued.
slavery at the hands of the Peking pack of predators
And just what would be the point of a life where you can't sell a few million people down the river every now and then?
But seriously, I expect you know that most of Hong Kong was under a 100 year lease due to expire 1997. I suppose it wasn't great foresight to put so much effort into developing a colony on such shaky foundations.Maybe the negotiators of 1897 thought a renewal would be possible in a hundered years' time, expecting Britain to still be as strong, and China to still be as weak, as it was in the late nineteenth century.
Who knows, perhaps if it hadn't been for the two WW's with their consequential bankrupting of the nation, not to mention the mass slaughter of so many men in their teens & 20's of WW1, Britain may have retained most of the wealth & global influence it had in those days..., although I think the rise of national identites around the world made the end of a formal "Empire" inevitable
Perhaps circumstances came along which Britain couldn't halt and were destined to see its decline and the rise of another...
As for the next power whose time may be up? This may be another case of a nation ineviatably having to expend its status and wealth on a great cause, one it can't escape if it wanted to.The question, the concern, is what rising international power will that great nation be able to turn to?
regards ;-)
<< Mark also lives in London for at least 1/3 of a year. >>
Bit braver than me. On my regular swings in from the Deepest Darkest and worse places where my particular activities take me the year around, I tend to head to Bristol and commute up to London.
Keep and eye on that Italian soccer-player-fancier, though.
Got a bit of a brain that one and a sharp eye for [Fellow] piss-takers -- and could kinda sort us out and cotton on.
Could probably make a pretty acceptable Pommy Migrant out of him -- or even, although it's a longer shot, a potential American -- after a summer or two on Palm Beach and a winter or two at Threadbow or on Hutt!
<];^)~<
Best'n's -- B A
Interestingly enough, the other night I listened to an overnight re-broadcast of Hong Kong's radio programmes here in Auckland, and an optspoken talk show host, Tao Kit, poked fun at Deng Xiaoping for his irrationality in deanding HK to be returned to the PRC. He also poked fun at Tung Chee-hwa and other main post-1997 officials that they didn't realise the colonial administration had masterfully put all the "mines" around key HK government posts and all of them got caught post-handover wise (property speculations, 'first-language' education, R&D development, etc). There was also a joke that why Deng Xiaoping insisted HK to be returned on 1 July 1997: by doing so they had contradicted themselves in declaring the 1898 treaty leasing the New Territories to be valid.
Seriously speaking, Hong Kong would have returned to China much earlier if the Republic of China completely disappeared in 1949 or if Chiang Kai-shek succeeded in regaining the mainland in 1960. In general, HK Chinese don't particularly like the British, but they don't hate them either. Most people wanted HK to stay British in the 1980s because the alternative, Communist PRC, looked far worse. If, in 1983-1984, the regime representing China in negotiation is a democratic one, HK people would have welcomed China in droves.
A new party seem to emerge with the election for the EU representatives. Hopefully, they will begin fielding candidates for Parliment. The Tories are dead as a party and need to be replaced with fresh young blood.
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