The Most Powerless Man in the World

[Arne]

The Most Powerless Man in the World

By Claus Christian Malzahn in Berlin

US President George W. Bush isn't known for his willingness for giving interviews, but he recently sat down with German TV presenter Sabine Christiansen for 30 minutes. He answered her questions readily -- but also showed that he's become little more than a spectator of his own political decline.


A man and a woman sit in front of an unlit fireplace in the White House. The woman is Germany's most well known TV presenter. The man is the most powerful man in the world -- or at least that's how he's introduced before the interview begins. And yet what we're shown on German ARD public television Sunday night is really a trans-Atlantic misunderstanding. Sabine Christiansen, who asks George W. Bush about one pressing global issue after another -- and who is relatively insistent when it comes to human rights issues -- isn't really talking to the most powerful man in the world at all. In the spring of 2006, one-and-a-half years after Bush's triumphant re-election, she may in fact be speaking to the most powerless US president of all time.

In the past 60 years, only one American president had worse poll ratings 18 months after his election: Richard Nixon at the end of his stint in office. Bush could safely ignore those polls if everything else were okay -- but at the moment nothing is. For some time now, the president has become an observer of his own political decline. But the world of television often has little to do with reality and Bush's plunge was hardly an issue in the interview.

Iraq is a long way from developing into the model democracy that Bush wanted to create by toppling Saddam Hussein. Iran is pressing ahead with its nuclear program, unimpressed by Washington's threats. Compared to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad and his fantasies about the annihilation of Israel, Saddam Hussein was a tinhorn despot.

From hawk to dove?

Bush's answer to the question of how he will respond to the threats from Tehran is a far cry from the hawkish rhetoric we've grown used to. Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy -- that's what he's betting on, at least for now. The hawks in Washington are burned out; they have no answers to what's happening in Iran. Oh wait, there's also Latin America, where they're electing one leftist government after another. What would once have given rise to crisis meetings and secret military plans doesn't even seem to be worth a question anymore.

Bush is running out of time, and not just because the end of his term is approaching. He knows it as well as anyone. Sometimes he speaks like an old man mellowed by the passage of time, pointing out not every problem in the world can be solved immediately. Is this still the same Bush that Old Europe feared as a crazy cowboy? This is clearly a president whose best days are behind him. Six years ago he still believed problems could be solved quickly, even bombed away. One-and-a-half years ago, he was re-elected for sticking to that sort of reasoning. Now that his public support has declined so dramatically, Bush must feel as lost as Bill Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair. But Sabine Christiansen didn't bring that up either.

What did get a lot of attention was terrorism in the Middle East. "It was worth it," Bush said of the invasion of Iraq. But that's exactly what many now are disputing -- including the very people who provided Bush with his political and ideological ammunition three years ago. In February, political thinker Francis Fukuyama called for a critical evaluation of neo-conservative influenced US foreign policy in the New York Times. It would have been interesting to hear what Bush thinks about this. Of course he's right to point out that 12 million Iraqis participated in the January 2005 elections; democracy in Iraq is now one factor in the lives of the Iraqi people. But it's not the decisive one. For many of these people, tyranny has simply been replaced by terrorism. That's something Bush can't deny -- and that's what makes him seem so powerless.

And then of course there's Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. it's certainly news that Bush now wants to close the detention camp in Cuba. Conditions there have long been controversial in the United States. But Bush is only half right when he says he'll punish those army officers responsible for torture and abuse. The top man in charge, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is still in office. If the man who sent the US Army to Baghdad without adequate preparation or equipment had resigned by now, Bush might not seem quite so helpless today.

Bush has given two interviews to the German media -- a gesture of friendship towards German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he needs more than ever. After all, he's lost all his other buddies in Western Europe. Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar was voted out of power two years ago, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is on his way out and Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi's last dance is over. So there's only Angie left. Bush calls her a "strong woman" -- a polite reply to a somewhat confusing question about German family policy. When Bush visits Europe and Germany in July, it will be a kind of goodbye tour. Who knows which "strong woman" -- Condoleeza Rice or Hillary Clinton -- will replace him to visit with Merkel the next time a US president comes to Germany. Maybe the fireplace will be lit then. Today it stayed cold: trans-Atlantic television ashes in the White House.