It became the mantra of President Bush's conduct of foreign policy.
Now, the United States' relationship with Russia looks much as it did just before the Cold War ended and the president's father was campaigning for the White House two decades ago. The Saudis continue to go their own way when it comes to pumping oil. And China took over the world stage during the Summer Olympics just concluded — without yielding on its strong-arm human rights practices.
Never mind the tete-a-tetes that Bush conducted at his parents' home in Kennebunkport, Maine, with Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin, the Saudi royalty visit to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, and the distance Bush traveled to demonstrate a friendship with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
Michael Abramowitz, writing in today's Washington Post, took a look at the president's reliance on stepping beyond the bounds of formal diplomacy and found that it didn't quite accomplish as much as Bush may have hoped.
He writes: "Many Russia experts say Bush did not understand the true intentions and character of the Russian leader."
But, he notes, White House officials present Bush as being "aggressive but realistic" in how he approaches world leaders.
He quotes Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council, who said:
While there are often policy issues that don't exactly go the way we want them to, the situation on the other hand could be much worse if the president did not have a decent working relationship with some of these leaders.
— James Gerstenzang
Photo: Former U.S. President Bush poses with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and current U.S. President Bush. Credit: Sergei Chirikov / EPA
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was supposed to head up the U.S. delegation to attend the closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympics on Sunday.
But, given her schedule to tackle the diplomatic repercussions of Russia's attack on Georgia, Rice can't make it.
So the White House announced today that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, who was already named to the delegation, will serve as as its leader.
Which makes us wonder -- why wasn't she chosen to head the delegation in the first place?
No disrespect meant to Rice. The secretary of State is a fascinating person in her own right, growing up in segregationist Birmingham, Ala., and becoming not only provost of Stanford University but also a concert pianist to boot. All that before she entered government service, where she served first as national security advisor and now as secretary of State.
Still, it could be argued that Chao is the most interesting member of Bush's Cabinet, having arrived in America from Asia at the age of 8 speaking no English. She went on to receive an undergraduate degree in economics from Mount Holyoke College and an MBA from Harvard. Then she did chapters in government, business and think tanks.
Chao, married to the Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is also the only member of the Cabinet who has served all eight years of the Bush presidency. And that deserves an award of some kind.
Also making the cut for the U.S. delegation to the Closing Gig: figure skating champion Michelle Kwan, U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth, Bush confidante and former assistant secretary of State Karen Hughes, U.S. Ambassador to China Clark Randt Jr. and Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt.
When the August crisis began, the president was focused on sports. The secretary of State was on vacation. The task of dealing with the problem fell to a friend of the president.
It sounds like the foreign policy equivalent of Hurricane Katrina, but it is the crisis in Georgia.
President Bush was in Beijing, paying heed to the Summer Olympic Games, although he was talking on the side with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on summer holiday. The diplomatic effort fell first and foremost to French President Nicholas Sarkozy, on behalf of the European Union.
The National Security Network, a centrist foreign policy think tank, made the analogy today to the administration's response three years ago to the devastating Gulf Coast hurricane, and in an added dig, called Sarkozy's mission "outsourced shuttle diplomacy."
President Bush was still in Beijing, having a great time. Between watching the swimming matches and doing his own mountain bike trek, the president gave an interview to NBC's Bob Costas, discussing his "constructive engagement" with China (over Sudan, Iran and religious freedom) and Russia (over its pounding of the independent country of Georgia).
Bush said he had talked to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, telling them the violence was "unacceptable" and seeking a cease-fire. He called it ironic that the Russian attacks occurred during a sporting event meant to "promote peace and harmony," and he said he hoped the two sides could get their differences "resolved peacefully."
Meanwhile, back in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney sounded a lot more hawkish. He called Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Sunday afternoon, stating "The Russian aggression must not go unanswered" and warning that continued violence "would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States."
Cheney Press Secretary Lea Ann McBride told the Associated Press that the vice president expressed U.S. solidarity with the Georgian people and with the democratically elected government "in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity."
Back in Beijing, Bush told Costas he was delivering many diplomatic messages. In fact, he told the Olympic audience, although he was sorry that the Chinese had revoked Joey Cheek's visa, "Joey Cheek has just got to know that I took the Sudanese message for him" and other athletes who had lobbied to increase awareness about Darfur.
Costas asked Bush whether it was difficult to press for reform with leaders from Russia and China while America was experiencing its own problems.
"I don't see America as having problems," Bush said. "I see America as a nation that is a world leader, that has got great values."
For a long time now, polls have not been friendly to President George "30%" Bush. He professes to pay them no heed. But just in case he's bored over there in Beijing and is checking out Countdown to Crawford, we present some poll news that might give him some (very) temporary cheer:
On the energy front, an ABC News survey found what the Washington Post characterized as "broad public support for government action." That could translate into new pressure on Congress to push ahead with loosening of restrictions on offshore drilling. The survey found that 63% favor an end to the embargo on new drilling in U.S. coastal waters, the Post reported.
On the other hand, the poll found even stronger support for tougher fuel efficiency standards, an area that has not drawn the same degree of presidential attention, to put it mildly.
But the president may not want to plunge too deeply into the polls.
A survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation looked into the question of how New Orleans residents feel they have been treated by Washington nearly three years after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
It found that 60% thought that rebuilding New Orleans was "not a priority" of the president and Congress, and that although 59% said their lives were "almost back to normal" or "largely back to normal," there were still 41% who said their lives were "still very disrupted" or "still somewhat disrupted."
On second thought, rather than reading the blogs, maybe the president would prefer to keep his focus on the Olympics. (In the photo at top, Bush takes in the U.S.-China basketball game with his wife, his father and Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.)
In the coming weeks, President Bush will be making a cameo appearance at...the White House.
Between Beijing, where he is watching swimming and basketball competitions and a warm-up baseball game at the Summer Olympic Games this weekend (and, yes, meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao), and a summer break at his home in Crawford, Texas, the president is planning to spend two days at the executive mansion.
While in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday, he is meeting with an energy coalition, participating in a ceremony opening a historic suite of office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House and posing for a photo with the winner of the 2008 National Spelling Bee.
And then, on to Crawford.
For the public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
The father-and-son team of former President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush dedicated the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing on Friday morning — and even that ribbon-cutting event did not entirely avoid the controversy that has marked the president's visit to the Olympics.
It was the current president's first formal event since arriving in China on Thursday evening, and he slipped in an oh-so-gently-worded reminder of the differences between the United States and his hosts over human rights, even as he suggested that they agree on the sensitive subject.
The question of human rights — and whether by attending the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games on Friday evening he was giving Beijing a pass — has dogged the president's trip to Asia since it began Tuesday.
He has defended his decision to attend the Games — in which the Chinese government has put huge political stock — as one built on his support for the American athletes. International politics and athletic competition can be kept apart, he has said.
And, as C2C noted a little while ago, he scheduled the dedication with a nod to Chinese tradition, which considers eight the luckiest number: It began at 8:08 a.m. on the eighth day of the eighth month of the year '08.
But nonetheless, on what is U.S. diplomatic turf in the heart of the Chinese capital, the president used the dedication of the embassy ...
From afar, in Bangkok, President Bush made clear his disagreement with Chinese authorities over their handling of human rights issues. He delivered a blunt criticism today of Chinese policies.
But when it comes to being a guest in China, the president is stepping gently.
Remember, now: "Eight is the luckiest number that the Chinese have in their tradition," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino advised reporters aboard Air Force One as Bush flew to Beijing from Thailand for a visit built around the opening of the Summer Olympic Games.
White House officials clearly took that tradition into account when they scheduled the dedication of the new U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
So, with the president, his father (the first President Bush and the first American to lead a U.S. liaison office in China in pre-embassy days), former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (who arranged the first presidential visit to China, by Richard M. Nixon in 1972), and the Gatlin Brothers (to sing the National Anthem) in attendance, the embassy will be dedicated on Friday. That is, the eighth day of the eighth month, in the year '08.
And at what minute will that occur? Do we really have to tell you?
At 8:08 a.m., of course.
This would be the proper time, then, to ask: Is there in the Bush family an undiscovered tendency to live by Asian tradition? Or, is the president and staff going out of their way to pay respect to Chinese custom, after, coincidentally, drawing Beijing's rebuke for his tough human rights remarks?
Before he left for Asia, President Bush said repeatedly that he was going to Beijing for the Olympics, not for diplomacy. "I made a decision not to politicize the Games; this is for athletics," he said at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska, where he talked to U.S. troops and refueled before heading to his first stop in South Korea.
Critics, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, warned that the president's presence at the Games -- he'll attend the Opening Ceremonies tomorrow -- could be misconstrued as supporting the communist regime in Beijing.
But ever since he's left, in every way possible, Bush has been making clear to China that its human rights record -- like denying U.S. speed skater Joey Cheek a visa because of his humanitarian effort to help starving Sudanese in Darfur -- is repressive. In Thailand today, before heading to Beijing, he said:
America stands in firm opposition to China's detention of political dissidents and human rights advocates and religious activists. We speak out for a free press, freedom of assembly, and labor rights, not to antagonize China's leaders, but because trusting its people with greater freedom is the only way for China to develop its full potential. We press for openness and justice, not to impose our beliefs, but to allow the Chinese people to express theirs. As Chinese scientist Xu Liangying has said: "Human nature is universal and needs to pursue freedom and equality."
Bush tried to soften his message by coupling it with praise for China's economic reforms and for the robust turn in U.S.-Chinese relations.
But the human rights quote was delivered loud and clear in Beijing, where the communist regime answered back quickly rejecting the president's advice. In a statement carried on CNN, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said:
We firmly oppose any statements or deeds which use human rights, religion and other issues to interfere with the internal affairs of other countries. Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of religion in accordance with the law. These facts are well known. Regarding the Sino-U.S. differences on issues including human rights and religion, we have always insisted on dialogue and communication based on mutual equality and mutual respect, in order to enhance understanding, reduce differences and to expand consensus.
Talk about ping-pong diplomacy: Next came news from the White House that Bush will attend church at the Kuanjie Protest Christian Church in Beijing on Sunday before meeting with President Hu Jintao. A Christian church in Communist China. No response yet from the government.
Meanwhile the president -- and First Lady Laura Bush -- made a major push while in Thailand to boost pressure on the military junta in Myanmar (Burma) to accept democratic reforms.
Visiting a refugee camp just six miles from the border, Mrs. Bush recalled the 20th anniversary of an uprising that led to 3,000 deaths. "Twenty years have gone by, everything is still the same or maybe worse in Burma," she said after a two-hour tour.
The president meanwhile told activists: "I want you to know, and I want the people of your country to know, the American people care deeply about the people of Burma, and we pray for the day in which the people will be free."
With President Bush seeking to demonstrate he is not papering over differences with China as he makes his way through Asia, the Chinese decision to keep speed skating champion Joey Cheek out of the country does not make the president's mission any easier.
Cheek, a 2006 Olympic gold medalist, is a co-founder of Team Darfur, an organization of athletes seeking to draw attention to human rights violations in the war-torn African region -- where China is a major purchaser of oil., the Washington Post reported.
He said his visa to visit China was revoked on Tuesday -- effectively prohibiting him from visiting, and presumably drawing attention to China's role in Darfur, during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games beginning Friday.
Bush is on his way to China to attend the opening ceremony and some of the initial competitions.
Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One today as Bush flew to Thailand, his final stop before reaching Beijing, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said:
We were disturbed to learn that the Chinese had refused his visa. We are taking the matter very seriously. We have sent in our embassy in Beijing to démarche the Chinese. That is where we go in and we say we are concerned about this, and we want you to reconsider your actions. So we would hope that they would change their mind.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
