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Originally Posted by retsuki03
It just depends on how you look at things. You can look at it (as I am sure you do) that Bush's policies have isolated America from Western Europe. Alternatively, you can look at it as Western Europe isolating itself from America because of disagreements on policies. Either way you look at it, I think the idea that the views between America and Europe are so divergent that Bush cannot be an effective president is laughable. Then again, I guess it depends on your meaning of effective...
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When the president is scheduled to appear in a place that the public would conceivably have access to, at home and abroad, that city or town, or a large segment of it, and several hundred square miles of air space above it, are
"locked down", access is blocked, businesses and schools are closed, and all
normal daily activity ceases. We saw this here, last month in DC, on Jan. 20.
Even for a brief Bush "public" appearance, work, shopping, school, and travel are interrupted for hours, or a day. Since at least early last year, only carefully pre-screened individuals who are sympathetic to Bush may be allowed in his presence to ask him pre-submitted and pre-approved questions, at home, and now in foreign countries as well.
White House attempts have recently been disclosed to provide Bush and his
press secretary with at least one sympathetic questioner who poses as a journalist at press briefings, to defuse and distract from real questioning by legitimate members of the press corp.
Executive branch department heads and aids have all been re-evaluated recently and it has been reported that loyalty to Bush was the determining factor in promotion, retnetion, and dismissal.
Bush seemed disoriented in the environment of the first presidential debate,
against John Kerry. The commentators of the press specualted that Bush lived in a "bubble" where he experienced no dissent or challenges by the limited number of people with access to him.
Now that Bush has removed even people like Colin Powell, who was presumed to disagree with him from time to time, has no spontaneous contact with the public and only a very limited amount with the press, is enveloped in the tightest and most extensive curtain of security that any official in the western world has apparently seen, can he be regarded by even those who support him as an effective, realistic, national and international leader, able to correctly sense the sentiment of the outside world, and it's reaction to what he says or does ?
How can he do this, given his ever increasing isolation, and doesn't the likelyhood increase that newly appointed deputy chief of staff Karl Rove and newly sworn in Sec'ty of State Condi Rice will interpret the outside world for Bush ? Is this what Bush supporters voted for ?