A la Recherche du Bush Perdu

EUROPEAN PUBLICS, fed by their media a steady diet of horror stories from Iraq and Michael Moore-style caricatures of the Bush administration's criminality, could be forgiven for being mystified and dismayed by the course of the U.S. presidential election.

With polls suggesting President Bush continues to enjoy a small but potentially crucial lead over John Kerry, Pierre and Wilhelm must be shaking their heads and wondering how on earth anyone could even be considering reelecting the half-wit war criminal currently in the White House.

John Kerry was not lying when he said in March that the rest of the world was egging him on. An opinion poll this month by the University of Maryland and the polling company Globescan found Kerry cruising to a landslide in the blue-state territory of Europe.

Bush scored just 5 percent among the French; in Germany he trailed Kerry by 59 percentage points. Even in Britain the president enjoyed only 15 percent support. The Poles were the only Europeans to favor Bush--and even then, by the thinnest of margins.

But Europeans don't get to vote in U.S. elections, fortunately. If they did, Ronald Reagan would never have been president; instead there would have been 16 glorious years of Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

But what about European governments? They might be expected to have a less monolithic attitude towards the choice before American voters.

It looks simple enough. The Atlanticists, those governments who backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, could be expected to hope for a Bush victory. The Poles in particular have let it be known that they do not take kindly to being derided by John Kerry as part of "the coalition of the coerced and the bribed." Tony Blair has staked his political career on victory in Iraq; a win for John Kerry, whose assault on the Bush administration must apply equally to Blair, would surely sound the British prime minister's death knell.

In Paris and Berlin, on the other hand, it is easy to imagine that candles are being lit every night for the triumph of St. John the Multilateralist over the Evil One. It is hard to imagine the French looking forward to the prospect of another four years of being lectured to by Donald Rumsfeld.

But the calculations in the chancelleries and palaces of Europe are actually a little more nuanced than that. Take Britain first.

There's no doubting Blair's warm personal relationship with President Bush and the respect the two leaders have for each other's steadfastness. The White House is so enamored of Blair that it has even stopped talking to the Republicans' old international ally, the British Conservatives, the party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, because of their attacks on Blair.

I bumped into a rising Tory politician visiting the Republican convention in New York earlier this month and asked him whether he had been getting the cold shoulder from GOP delegates. On the contrary, he replied gloomily. "As soon as they hear my accent they break into a broad smile, shake me warmly by the hand and say, 'I just wanted to say how much I love your prime minister, Tony Blair.'"

A defeat for Bush might sound like another ominous roll of the drums for Blair, after José María Aznar's loss in Spain earlier this year. If John Howard were also to lose next month in Australia's general election, could Blair really survive?

Blair himself has instructed party officials not to get involved in any way in the U.S. election, even rebuking some of his Labour colleagues who are begging to get out and help in whatever way they can the Kerry campaign.

But there are Machiavellian figures in Downing Street who don't necessarily see it the same way. A Kerry win might, at a stroke, remove Blair's biggest political liability within his Labour party--his close relationship with the despised Bush administration.

And though John Kerry might like to disdain Britain as a Bush lackey for its role in Iraq, he must know that any hopes he has for a renewed transatlantic relationship will still have to go through London, where an American will always find a more receptive audience than he will in Paris.

It's unlikely Blair himself sees it that way; his support for the Bush administration's foreign policy is genuine. But do not be surprised if he proves as adept at transitioning from Bush to Kerry, if Kerry wins, as he was from Clinton to Bush.

And what about Old Europe: the French and the Germans? Their diplomatic behavior of late certainly suggests they are digging in for a Kerry victory.