| 14 December 2004 | Tuesday | 01 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
The question of UN's reform
Nothing remembered, nothing learned
Turkish entry: EU's reservations
Four more years of decline
For several years now - especially since the truncated Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization in 1999 - many in the developing countries have worried that the process generally referred to as "globalization" could bring them more harm than good.
Since the world's economic leaders didn't know how to deal with a frontal attack on an economic philosophy in which most of them had come to believe, they abandoned the effort to launch another round of multilateral trade negotiations.
The Seattle meeting came to a premature conclusion, thwarted by the militancy of a number of groups who were not prepared to let the world's economic leaders write another chapter in the quickly moving story of globalization.
The activists at Seattle included groups from both the developed and developing world. Despite the setback at Seattle, international trade negotiations were put back on track two years later at Doha. Nonetheless, worries about the impact of globalization remain.
In most economic literature globalization is interpreted as easing constraints on the flows of trade and finance among all countries, both developed and developing.
That such openness would help rich countries was recognized and acted upon since the 1960s or thereabouts. Most developed countries allowed the free movement of finance and capital among themselves. And, following agreements on trade reached at successive rounds of multilateral negotiations launched under the aegis of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), tariffs on trade among rich countries were drastically reduced. Industrial countries also lowered - though not totally eliminated - other obstacles on the movements of goods and commodities.
The pressure on the developing world to move in the same direction began to increase following the debt crisis of the 1980s that began with Mexico and quickly spread to all middle income countries that had borrowed from the international capital markets, including commercial banks.
In return for help from the international financial and development institutions, the developing world was required to accept the approach to economic management embedded in what had come to be called the Washington Consensus.
The consensus carried the name of the American capital for the simple reason that the approach it advocated was thought out in a number of institutions located in that city.
Those who were involved in the development of this framework included not only the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank but also a number of Washington-based think tanks.
The Washington Consensus went beyond the view that open trade and financial markets promote economic growth and development. It also advocated a limited role for the state in economic management. "Leave it to the market" became the mantra of most of those asked to advise the developing world.
The governments were encouraged to give up the ownership and management of numerous enterprises they controlled. A very large number of state-owned enterprises were put on the market, in particular in Latin America.
Some of these were purchased by foreign corporations and some by private equity funds managed from the world's major money centres. This laid the basis of large flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into developing countries.
FDI flows are responsible for changing the industrial production system by fragmenting it. How the new system works and what is its implications for a country such as Pakistan is a subject I will take up in later article.
The reason for reminding the readers of some of these developments is to discuss another subject - the current turmoil in international currency markets and its likely consequences for countries such as Pakistan.
Those who were troubled by the adverse impact of globalization on the developing world, did not focus on the extreme volatility that could result from the easy flow of money and goods. They were worried about a number of other issues such as the growing disparities between developed and developing countries.
They were also concerned about the damage that was being done to the physical environment in the developing world as transnational corporations moved some of their operations out of the industrial world to the countries that had less stringent controls on pollution.
They were unhappy that many large industrial countries' corporations were exploiting labour in the developing world. This was particularly the case for the industries that needed to employ young women, sometimes even children. But globalization has also brought about other problems. Among these the one receiving a great deal of attention in the industrial world at this time is the plunge in the value of the American dollar with respect to almost all major world currencies.
The dollar has declined in value by eight per cent since August 2004 and continues to lose value with every passing week. The weak dollar is simply a symptom of the fact that the global economy is seriously out of balance. Americans have become global consumers of last resort, buying up goods and commodities for which they don't have the money to pay.
The system works as follows. America buys much more than it sells, in particular in its trade with East Asia. This creates large trade imbalances and leaves Washington owing a great deal of money to those countries from which it makes large purchases.
Those not paid are happy to lend money to America by buying the bonds issued by the Treasury in Washington. The rate of lending by Asia - which essentially means China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan - to the United States has reached the level of $1.8 billion a day.
For many years, the Americans could afford to run large trade deficits since the value of overseas assets held by US companies and citizens were much higher than those owned by foreigners in America.
The income from foreign owned assets was enough to pay for the deficit in trade. But that was in the past. Years of selling US treasuries, stocks and bonds of private countries - even real estate purchases by foreigners - have turned things around.
The value of US assets abroad is now far less than foreign-owned assets in America. The difference is estimated at 25 per cent of GDP and, according to Paris based OECD, the difference could double to 50 per cent over the next 10 years.
Without some serious policy changes, the US's dependence on imports is not likely to decline. The US is expected to borrow $670 billion in 2004 from the rest of the world.
That works out to an unprecedented 5.7 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. Even in the more profligate years of the 1980s when Ronald Reagan governed in a nonchalant way, the current account deficit never increased beyond 3.3 per cent of GDP.
The United States was able to increase its trade deficit as proportion of GDP since a number of countries were prepared to build large reserves of dollars. The building of reserves is equivalent to lending to the United States since they are mostly held in dollar denominated assets.
The willingness of large American creditors to lend to America has been profoundly beneficial to Washington. It has made it possible to keep interest rates low and finance government expenditures including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without creating a large debt-servicing burden. It also made it possible for the administration of President George W Bush to reduce the burden of tax on the American citizens.
To be fair to the US, it should be recognized that the creditor nations have also benefited a great deal from this arrangement. China in particular - but also Korea, Taiwan and Japan - have been able to run their export industries at full steam to serve the almost insatiable American appetite for consumer goods.
To keep these exports attractive to the US consumers, Asian economies - China, Hong Kong and Malaysia in particular - have pegged their currencies to the US dollar.
Without pegging, the value of these currencies would have increased, the demand for the products produced by these countries would have declined in the US and exports from them would have suffered resulting in a reduction in their rate of economic growth. There were, therefore, winners on both sides of the equation. The only problem is that this model cannot be sustained for much longer.
To begin with, the US debt to the countries from which it buys the most has increased enormously. There are now huge dollar reserves available to the central banks in Asia. These add up to $1.5 trillion ($515 billion in the case of China, $235 billion for Taiwan, $179 billion for Korea and $120 billion for India) and most of them are held in the form of US government securities.
Will these countries continue to hold these reserves in dollar denominated assets especially when the American currency is losing its value steadily? An answer to this question came recently from the chairman of the US Federal Reserve system, the country's central bank.
"A diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances must occur at some point," said Alan Green span in a recent speech. Having spoken the truth he quickly sought to provide some comfort to an increasingly nervous world.
He saw "only limited indications" that the creditor countries will lessen their dollar holdings in significant amounts. They would not do that for the reasons discussed above.
Selling American assets - US Treasury bonds, bonds issued by the companies based in America, the properties foreigners own in the United States - would create a panic in the international financial markets. The value of the dollar would plunge and the US would be forced to raise domestic interest rates to slow the slide in the value of its currency.
A sharp rise in interest rates would reduce America's demand for foreign goods which would affect the rate of economic growth in the countries that are dependent on exports to America. In other words, a loss of confidence in the US currency would simply spread a great deal of economic misery around the globe.
A volatile foreign exchange market does not even help countries such as Pakistan which don't have a very high trade to GDP ratio. Pakistan and many other developing counties have acted upon the advice they have received from international financial institutions by floating their currencies. It is, therefore, as subject to foreign exchange volatility as other parts of the world.
This is one reason why the value of the rupee has bounced around a great deal in the last several weeks. This is unhelpful for the enterprises in the country that produce for external markets since they can't be certain as to how much their products would actually fetch once they reach their customers.
The solution is not to bring back the old world of fixed exchange rates. The clock cannot and should not be turned back. The solution is to teach good economic management to the United States and convince the policymakers in Washington that they can not possibly continue with the present model.
They have to move towards the eventual balance of their two books - the domestic as well as the foreign book. The operative word is "eventually" since any effort to bring back solvency to the US economy would be extremely disruptive for the rest of the world.
It will take extremely intelligent and thoughtful macroeconomic management by Washington to bring its own economy into equilibrium. This is why the re elected President George W. Bush appears to be in favour of bringing new managers into his team as he starts his second term.
The question of UN's reform
Since its establishment in 1945, the United Nations lived in the grip of the cold war era, which prevented it from fulfilling its core objective of the maintenance of international peace and security, and was widely criticized for its poor performance.
The landmark millennium summit of the world body, held in September 2000, however, provided an opportunity for reflection and the heads of state and government who gathered on the occasion gave clear directions for adapting the UN to the new century. For obvious reasons, major structural changes in the existing UN system were needed to enable the apex world body to keep pace with the fast changing world.
The UN millennium declaration, adopted on September 8, 2000, ordained that no effort should be spared to make the United Nations a more effective instrument for pursuing all its objectives enshrined in the Charter.
The declaration also reaffirmed the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the United Nations, and to enable it to play that role effectively.
The declaration also required intensifying efforts to achieve a comprehensive reform of the Security Council, in all its aspects, so that it may play its central role in the promotion of the international peace and security.
The General Assembly, in the past, authorized the establishment of working groups to focus on matters of importance, including the reform of the United Nations. The open-ended working group on the question of the equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and other matters related to the Council continued its work all these years but could not hammer out an acceptable formula for changes.
Last year, the secretary-general appointed a high-level panel on threats, challenges and change to make a thorough assessment of the principal organs of the United Nations and to recommend practical measures to make them more effective.
The panel's mandate was essentially confined to the field of peace and security but it was expected to extend its analysis and make recommendations relating to other issues and institutions, including economic and social ones, to the extent that they have a direct bearing on future threats to peace and security.
The panel was not, however, asked to formulate policies on specific issues, nor on the role of the United Nations in specific cases. The eagerly awaited panel's report has since been submitted to the secretary-general (December 2).
The chairman of the panel in his transmittal letter to the secretary-general has stated that the members of the panel may not be in full agreement on every specific point and detail of the report but they all endorse the report and generally agree with its findings.
However, the members of the panel disagree on the formulas put forward for Security Council's expansion as well as on the question of veto. In his initial reaction, the secretary-general has generally endorsed the panel's findings and recommendations and expressed the hope that it would provide answers to some of the burning questions of the new century.
He would, however, submit his own report, factoring in the panel's recommendations, to the special UN summit that is scheduled to be held in September next year. Notwithstanding the secretary-general's optimism, it is not difficult to predict the outcome of the panel's report, particularly on UN's reform.
The recommendations submitted by the panel, apart from revitalizing the General Assembly, expansion of the Security Council and the question of veto also covered a number of other issues, which are inter-related with international peace and security.
These include counter-terrorism strategy, nuclear non-proliferation, conflicts between and within states, human rights, transnational organized crimes, poverty alleviation, the role of sanctions, etc.
However, owing to constraints of space this article only focuses on strengthening the General Assembly's role and expansion of the Security Council. The recommendations of the panel on these issues are summarized and commented on briefly in the following paragraphs.
i. The General Assembly: The Panel has recommended that the member states should renew efforts to enable the General Assembly to perform its function as the main deliberative organ of the United Nations.
This would, however, require a better conceptualization and shortening of the agenda, which should reflect the contemporary challenges facing the international community. Smaller and more tightly focused committees could help sharpen and improve resolutions that are brought to the whole Assembly.
The panel has also recommended that following the recommendation of the report of the panel of eminent persons on United Nations- civil society relations, the General Assembly should establish a better mechanism to enable a systematic engagement with civil society organizations.
ii. The Security Council: The panel has recommended that in pursuance of Article 23 of the Charter, the General Assembly should increase the involvement in decision-making of those members who contribute most to the United Nations financially, specifically in terms of contributions to the United Nations' assessed budgets, apart from their participation in mandated peace operations, contributions to the voluntary activities of the United Nations in areas of security, and development and diplomatic activities in support of the United Nations objectives and mandates. In other words, the panel has virtually proposed to offer the additional permanent seats in the Security Council to the highest bidders.
Regrettably, the panel's recommendation is based on gross misinterpretation of Article 23 which only requires the General Assembly to elect additional non-permanent members giving due regard to the contribution made by them to the maintenance of international peace and security.
The UN Charter does not require the additional permanent members of the Council to bear any additional financial responsibility by virtue of holding this position. As a matter of fact, the main basis for expansion of the Security Council is the concept of equitable geographical representation and member's capability and willingness to play a special role in the maintenance of international peace and security.
The panel has presented two clearly defined formulas for expansion of the Security Council. Both of them involve a distribution of seats between four major regional areas namely Africa, Asia, Pacific, Europe and Americas.
The panel has not recommended any change in the composition of the current regional groups. The first formula provides for six new seats, with no veto power, and three new two-year term non-permanent seats, divided among the major regional areas.
The second formula provides for no new permanent seats, but creates a new category of eight four-year renewable-term seats and one new two-year non-permanent and non-renewable seat, to be divided among the major regional areas.
The panel has also recommends that under any reform proposal, there should be no expansion of the veto. Since there exists deep divergence of opinion among the members of the panel on the proposed formulas, the present efforts to reform the Security Council would, in all probability, be fruitless.
Notwithstanding claims of the aspirants who have conducted a world wide campaign in capitals to garner support for the expansion of the Security Council for permanent and non-permanent membership, substantial differences continue to exist on the question of categories.
For obvious reasons, the expansion and reform of the Council should not lead to new centres of privilege and should be in accordance with the principle of equitable geographical representation and sovereign equality of member states.
The entire process of reform should be aimed at making the working procedures of the Security Council more transparent and participatory. Similarly, the concept of veto is an anachronism, and militates against the democratic norms of the United Nations. There is near consensus on the need to curtail, if not eliminate it altogether.
The writer is a former ambassador.
Nothing remembered, nothing learned
I have been reading Robert Dallek's biography of John F. Kennedy An Unfinished Business. There is a chapter, which is titled 'Reluctant Warrior', which deals with Vietnam.
It was Eisenhower who subscribed to the domino theory, which predicted communist control of all of Southeast Asia following a South Vietnamese collapse, and therefore, North Vietnam had to be defeated. Kennedy, therefore, inherited an on-going commitment to keep the government of South Vietnam propped up.
Kennedy had publicly expressed doubts in the 1950s about western efforts to thwart Vietnamese self-determination. He had brought these doubts to the White House. Kennedy was under pressure from hawks both in the State Department and the Pentagon for a clear and open American commitment.
In a meeting with Walt Rostow of the State Department and General Maxwell Taylor, Rostow sent Kennedy a memo summarizing his and General Taylor's understanding of Kennedy's views.
A key paragraph in the memo read: "You (Kennedy) would wish to see every avenue of diplomacy exhausted before we accept the necessity for either positioning US forces on the Southeast Asian mainland or fighting there; you would wish to see the possibilities of economic assistance fully exploited to strengthen the Southeast Asian position; you would wish to see the indigenous forces used to the maximum if fighting should occur; and that, should we have to fight, we should use air and sea power to the maximum and engage minimum US forces on the Southeast Asian mainland."
As a prelude to any direct involvement in Vietnam, Kennedy wanted to focus world attention on North Vietnamese aggression against Laos and Saigon. Still smarting over the embarrassment to Washington from the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy believed it essential to prepare public opinion to accept possible US intervention "otherwise any military action we might take against Northern Vietnam will seem like aggression on our part." Kennedy's basic message to his advisers was that US military involvement was to be a last resort"
History would be unkind to Kennedy for he would be credited (?) with setting off America's military involvement in Vietnam and the supreme irony would be that Richard Nixon who in one of his delusional moments had actually considered dropping a nuclear bomb on Hanoi, would ultimately negotiate the peace in Vietnam through Henry Kissinger.
Henry Kissinger had been a key player in the war in Vietnam. I have always felt about Henry Kissinger that on his bedside table was a copy of Machiavelli's book. Kissinger himself would later admit that he was puzzled over the succession of outsiders (including himself) who had mistakenly entered "that distant monochromatic land in the name of some principle or other only to recede in disillusion."
The wisdom of the sages has always maintained that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. One would have thought that some lessons would have been learnt from Vietnam and one of the lessons would have been not to be snowballed by those who believe that there is a military solution to every problem. Remarkably, no one seemed to know anything at all about Vietnam's history.
Robert Dallek makes a special point to encapsulate it in a single paragraph but it's a telling paragraph. He writes: "It was as if Vietnam has no past to provide a cautionary tale for any nation trying to shape its destiny.
But of course there was a history, a history of unrelenting struggle against centuries of Chinese control, followed by a hundred years of French rule dating from the 1860s and a period of Japanese occupation during World War II.
"A fight for independence led by Ho Chi Minh beginning in 1946 had culminated in the 1954 victory at Dien Bien Phu over the French and the north-south division.
American assumptions that the United States would do better than the French in defeating the Vietnamese aspirations for a unified independent country rested on the arrogance of a modern superpower battling a so-called backward people."
Of course, I am writing this in the context of the war in Iraq and the United States and its camp-followers chose to exercise the military option to pursue its agenda in the Middle East and find itself in the same sort of quagmire as it did in Vietnam and with no exit strategy in sight.
The present concentration seems to be on elections, as if elections in a country that is occupied by foreign armies will bring to an end a full-fledged insurgency that may not be claiming too many American lives but is killing Iraqis, so many, that all count has been lost.
The expectation is that elections will result in the formation of some sort of government that will be acceptable to the Iraqi people and who will see it as being in accordance with the aspirations of all shades of Iraqi opinion.
The most disheartening aspect of this is that it is accepted that the violence (which means the killing of Iraqi people) will get worse in the lead up to the elections.
We have come a long way from weapons of mass destruction and the smoking-gun that would be in the form of a mushroom cloud. We have come an even longer way from the avowed purpose of the Iraqi invasion, which was the liberation of the Iraqi people from the brutal tyranny of Saddam Hussain.
Efforts to link Iraq to the war on terror has miserably failed though there is no denying that the war in Iraq has been enormously helpful to the terrorists whose ranks have swelled. The only positive seems to the emergence of global public opinion. Dropping some daisy-cutters on it will not silence it.
Turkish entry: EU's reservations
Six months after the European Union expanded to its present size the bloc's leaders meeting in Brussels on December 16-17 are expected to set a date for opening membership talks with Turkey.
Europe's embrace of Turkey will mark a historic turning point in a constantly evolving EU which began life over fifty years ago as a small club of six nations determined to bring peace and stability to a war-wrecked continent and now includes 25 countries, including eight former communist nations of eastern Europe.
By bringing in a country which has long been a member of the NATO military alliance but has been kept outside the EU for a host of political, social and religious reasons, the decision to open entry talks with Ankara will set the EU on course for an even more significant transformation.
Turkey's membership of the EU will boost Europe's global standing, inject much-needed dynamism into the flagging EU economies and help Europeans build bridges with the Islamic world - as well as the 15 million Muslims who live in Europe.
Despite the high stakes, however, the European public and EU politicians remain fiercely divided over Turkish entry, with many uneasy about the country's large size, relative poverty and, above all, the fact that although it has a secular constitution, Islam is the main the religion of Turkey's 70 million people.
Given these doubts, EU leaders meeting in Brussels on December 16-17 are widely expected to qualify their go-ahead for starting membership talks with a string of strict new conditions, including the demand that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan must recognize (Greek) Cyprus, accept all-time restrictions on labour migration to the EU and agree that entry talks could be put on ice at any time if there is slippage on political reform.
Even more controversially, France and Austria are demanding that Turkey should be ready to accept the fallback option of a special or privileged relationship rather than full membership if it fails to comply with EU political standards.
There is also a growing EU consensus that negotiations with Turkey must open at the end of 2005 -after key states like France hold their referendum on the bloc's new constitution - with talks perhaps spanning a period of 10 to 15 years.
EU fretting over relations with Turkey is not new. Ankara has been knocking on EU doors for over 40 years, with successive governments in Ankara seeing membership of the club as both a motor and a guarantee for domestic reforms.
For just as long, however, many in the EU have put emotion - and prejudice - ahead of rational debate on the pros and cons of Turkish entry. Current EU discussion on the issue has become even more difficult because of many Europeans' post 9-11 wariness of Islam and Muslims.
Some of the arguments put forward by Turko-sceptics in Europe illustrate an unashamed anti-Islamic bias. A former EU high-up, Frits Bolkestein, said opening the doors to Turkey means that the repulsion of Ottoman forces from the gates of Vienna in 1683 would have been in vain.
French Prime Minister Jean Pierre Raffarin has warned against allowing the "river of Islam" to mingle with European secularism. Former French President Valery Gis card d'Estaing has cautioned that Turkey inside Europe will mean the end of the bloc's dream of ever-closer union.
Germany's conservative opposition party leader Angela Merkel is also against Turkish membership and says that Ankara should be offered a special partnership instead of full accession. Austria and Cyprus are also anti-Turkey hardliners and are expected to make their points of view clear at the EU summit.
French President Jacques Chirac used to be an enthusiastic supporter of Turkey inside the EU. But, aware of rising anti-Islamic sentiments in his country, Chirac has started insisting in recent months that the Union must have a plan B which allows Ankara to forge privileged relations with the EU if it fails to meet entry standard.
Turkey can, however, count on a number of strong friends and allies in Europe, including Britain's Tony Blair, German Chanceller Gerhard Schroeder and the leaders of Spain and Italy.
The European Commission is also on Ankara's side, announcing in October that it believed Turkey had met all the key pro-democracy and human rights standards to join the EU.
Even once entry talks start, however, Ankara will be kept under strict surveillance. "The momentum of reforms must be maintained and their implementation strengthened, once accession negotiations begin," warned EU enlargement chief Olli Rehn recently.
Ankara has so far stayed firm in its drive to ease European concerns. Erdogan and his ministers spent most of last week sweet-talking EU leaders and European big business while Turkish artists show-cased the country's modern and traditional culture. But the Turkish leader has also warned that his patience with the EU is beginning to wear thin. "I get the impression Turkey is being held to stricter criteria than other candidates," Erdogan said recently.
"No other country had to wait 41 years at the door of the European Union. We have done all that was demanded of us, and they Europeans are still hesitating. That can clearly be called discrimination." Few would disagree with the statement.
Four more years of decline
The curse of the nanny is almost routine these days. No White House team can dodge it as the vengeful virus spreads. Exit one director of homeland security designate in the time it takes to change a diaper - or fast track a visa through the Home Office. (If Osama were really as bright as people say, he'd be training squads of suicide nannies even now.)
But do not, perhaps, follow the spin here too swiftly. Pause over the disaster of Bernie Kerik before hurrying on. Kerik, unlike most other nanny gate victims, isn't some busy lady lawyer juggling private practice and a family in distracted desperation.
Long ago, he was Rudy Giuliani's driver, the chauffeur who became chief of Rudy's NYPD, the capo di tutti copos in charge for 9/11, the mate the ex-mayor recommended when he turned down the homeland job himself. Law enforcement and detection are his professional business, illegal immigration and proper payment of taxes his natural concerns.
But he wasn't a natural choice - in experience or diplomacy - to run a great umbrella department of state. There were other confirmation issues for him, too: a $6.2m stock option killing on stun guns, for instance, or the jokes about Caligula's police horse. The Senate hearings were always going to be tough, even before he "discovered" a hole in nanny's paperwork. And there's the crucial, overarching point.
Kerik was a flawed candidate from the beginning, selected sloppily from a lacklustre field. As he departs, the Oval Office sucks its collective thumb. Though Tom Ridge, the incumbent director, announced long before the election that he'd be quitting (he wasn't making enough money to keep his family in the manner accustomed), the search for a successor has been a continuing botch. Which, in turn, sends an early, dissonant message about Bush's second term.
Only six weeks after his victory, the vibrations continue euphoric going on triumpha list. Depressed Democrats wonder if they could ever win again. Pundits ponder theses about eternal Republican hegemony.
Talk is of more Bush power, more neo conservative solutions, more variations on a narrow and occasionally alarming agenda. But is that quite what unfolding events tell us? The White House - as recommended by the 9/11 commission - got its director of national intelligence last week, who'll supervise a $40bn annual budget and sit atop the CIA, FBI and assorted agencies.
It didn't, however, get these plans through Congress without a grinding argument, with Republicans leading the charge. And it hasn't got a star candidate for that top job either.
For all the hot air rising, the great umbrellas of civil defence and proactive intelligence are still folded, while around Mr Bush's cabinet table talented operators like Colin Powell, and many less formidable figures, depart. That's natural, perhaps.
They're tired or bored or anxious to write a book. But the interesting thing is who survives: not just Donald Rumsfeld, but notably under powered performers like the treasury secretary, John Snow. No one, it seems, is very keen on joining this supposedly refreshed administration. No one (least of all Rudy Giuliani) sees their future there.
That's no surprise when you think about it, though. For there is no future that Bush can offer beyond four more declining years. Senator Joe Biden is already signalling he'll be a Democratic contender in 2008; Hillary Clinton openly ponders her options; likely governors clear their diaries and form little campaign teams.
This race never stops, this race is never won. And George Bush has voluntarily relinquished his right to a say on its course. He let (or perhaps was powerless to resist) Dick Cheney be his running mate again.
Cheney is not a possible candidate in 2008. He is thus the only vice-president serving a second (fixed) term president whose career automatically stops when the boss stops. Nixon ran to succeed Eisenhower, Bush senior to succeed Reagan, Gore to succeed Clinton.
While there was that prospect of continuity there was also some hope of continuing Washington employment. But, four years hence, all the old Bush boys get their cards.
That matters hugely. It matters if you're James Sensen brenner, the Republican chairman of the House judiciary committee, who caused Bush so much grief over his national intelligence director - and vows to cause much more. What has he to lose? He'll be there when George W is back at the ranch forever.
It matters if you're a Republican hopeful or might-be in some governor's mansion from Sacramento to Albany. You can't keep quiet about things that go wrong; you have to be your own critical man. It matters because obvious recruits like Rudy send their horse instead. -Dawn/ Guardian Service