He’s All Ears

The strongest hint that George W. Bush might actually have changed his thinking about Europe came not during his big speech in Brussels last week — the centerpiece of his four-day, three-country European tour — but in a much more low-key forum. Seated at a table in Mainz with a group of young German professionals, Bush tried to put the transatlantic alliance into perspective. After 9/11, he said, the U.S. and Europe developed very different views about global security — and he conceded that occasionally caused leaders to mistake each other’s meaning. “Sometimes we talk past each other,” said the President, “and I plead guilty at times.”

Bush doesn’t say that kind of thing at home. He is famous for not admitting mistakes. Suggesting that he might actually bear equal responsibility for the frayed relations he was now trying to mend signaled to Europeans that the “Cowboy in Chief” might be ready to holster his guns. Certainly that was the message Bush spent the week trying to send. Usually he rushes through the diplomatic sessions and endless pomp of foreign visits. He is a man of action. He doesn’t trust a lot of talk. That’s one of the reasons he gets irritated by French President Jacques Chirac. (Administration aides like to joke that at state dinners, the French President can’t stop lecturing long enough to eat any of the food on his plate.) But when Air Force One landed in Brussels for the start of his first foreign trip since winning re-election, the man of action gave himself over to the art of conversation. “You might call this a listening tour,” he said during a press conference with nato Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. “People have got things on their mind and they want me to hear it.”

And so Bush listened as Chirac explained why lifting the arms embargo on China was a good idea; he listened as German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder argued that the U.S. must be more engaged in trying to convince Iran to drop its nuclear program; and he listened as Russian President Vladimir Putin batted back concerns about creeping autocracy in the Kremlin. Bush came to Europe, heard the views, but was he conquered by the arguments?

Administration officials insist the President’s new posture is genuine. Bush, they say, wants to put the emphasis on diplomacy. In private, though, senior officials traveling with the President made it clear that the U.S. position had not changed on the most contentious issues: America, for instance, remains staunchly opposed to the E.U.’s move to lift the China arms embargo. And Bush is unlikely to soften his position on negotiating with Iran over the country’s nuclear program, though his message on this point was mixed. Asked about U.S. intentions toward Iran, Bush replied: “This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table.” When National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley later suggested that the U.S. might be open to offering incentives to encourage Iran to halt its uranium-enrichment program, Bush left the door open. “I’m going to go back and think about the suggestions I’ve heard,” he said.

The hardest conversation of all was with Putin. During a speech in Brussels, Bush said that “all European countries should place democratic reform at the heart of their dialogue with Russia.” So when the two leaders met later in the week in Bratislava, Slovakia, there was no chummy back-slapping. Putin was defensive, deflecting concerns about the Kremlin’s crackdown on the media by pointing out that reporters from TV network cbs had been fired in the U.S., too. The accusation — no American reporters have been fired by the White House — confused Bush and reinforced the Administration view that Putin sometimes acts based on urban myths about the U.S. fed to him by ill-informed aides.

After a tense press conference with Putin, Bush was happy to be headed home and worked out his post-travel weariness onboard Air Force One. Was this kinder, gentler Bush just for show, or is the President really serious about setting a new tone? Europeans have reason to be skeptical. Last week’s rhetoric of shared values and a common way forward sounded a lot like the rhetoric of Bush’s previous fence-mending trips. And Bush himself seemed to signal that not all that much had changed. When asked about the “old and new Rumsfeld” — a reference to the U.S. Defense Secretary’s recent self-deprecating remarks about his use of “Old Europe” to refer to France and Germany — the President interjected: “Same old Bush.”