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.
They have studiously avoided doing anything that might be of the slightest help to
Bush in his reelection effort. At the NATO summit in Istanbul this summer they declined to help the United States out in any meaningful way in Iraq, denying the administration a diplomatic victory that might have deflated some of Kerry's coalition-building rhetoric.
At the same time they are doing nothing directly obstructive that might provide ammunition to the Bush campaign, enabling Republicans to point up the unreliability of Kerry's favored allies. They have instead carefully sat on their hands, apparently hoping against hope for change in November.
But would they really be happy with a Kerry win?
European governments are steadily beginning to realize that Kerry will ask the Europeans for all kinds of things they will be unwilling or unable to provide. The Democrat has staked his candidacy on getting more international support in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will find it hard to take "Non" for an answer from Paris. That may make for an uncomfortable series of discussions between President Kerry, President Jacques Chirac, and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Given the level of expectations on both sides, Old Europe might think it would be better off dealing with another four years of President Bush, who at least will expect nothing and get nothing from them.
There's another reason the French and the Germans might be quietly rooting for a Bush victory.
The unpopularity of President Bush, and Chirac's and Schröder's aggressive stand against him, is the only thing that gives the French and German leaders any sort of credibility in the eyes of their own people. Both head otherwise unpopular governments pursuing largely failed economic policies at home. In particular, anti-Bush sentiment keeps alive the French dream of uniting Europe in opposition to the United States--Chirac's famous counterweight to the superpower.
They need Bush.
In any case, the French governing elite would surely miss having someone to scorn in Washington. It feeds their innate self-belief and superiority complex. A senior French diplomat was recently overheard bemoaning to a fawning audience of like-minded souls the rising level of anti-French sentiment in America.
"They've stopped eating French fries in the Capitol. Some restaurants in New York no longer sell French wine," he said. Then, the sarcastic coup de grâce: "I've even heard that George Bush has stopped reading Proust."
They'd never be able to heap that kind of abuse on John Kerry.
Gerard Baker is U.S. editor of the Times of London and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.
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