There is no question that President Bush has led the country differently than any other recent President.  He has at times been combative, yet gracious.  In foreign policy, he has made our traditional European allies angry and frustrated.  Yet, he has accomplished much during his three years as President.  Let’s think about his style as we enter 2004, a presidential election year.

In a recent editorial, columnist David Brooks argued, tongue in cheek, that the Bush administration is too honest and straightforward.  He writes, “Until the Bush team came to power, foreign relations were conducted with a certain gentlemanly decorum. . . . The Clinton administration pretended to fight terrorism without committing the sin of unilateralism by trying very hard.”  The UN passed resolution after resolution against Saddam Hussein without ever trying to enforce them.  The leaders of France and Germany announced their abhorrence of Saddam’s regime and expressed this abhorrence by doing as much business with Saddam as possible. 

(1) An early sign that things would be different came when the Bush administration declared its opposition to the Kyoto treaty.  Up until that time, all decent governments had “remained platonically in love with the treaty.”  They praised it, but gave no thought to actually enforcing it.  Bush said he would scuttle it and he did. 

(2) Then Bush scandalized the world by announcing he wanted to enforce the UN resolutions on Iraq.  Furthermore, he announced such by declaring the doctrine of preemptive war.  Brooks writes, “Instead of merely taking out Saddam while pretending to abide by the inherited rules of conduct, he actually announced what he was going to do before doing it.  This was taking honesty to a reckless extreme.” 

(3) Further, the US faced three nations that had stabbed it in the back repeatedly; namely France, Germany and Russia.  The German leader, Gerhard Schroeder, vowed not to run for reelection in 2002 based on an anti-American platform, then turned around and did just that.  The French did all they could to ensure that the US effort to transform Iraq would fail.  Russia was willing “to let the Iraqis rot in their slave state.”  Now the US has roughly $18 billion to spend on the effort to rebuild Iraq.  What should it do?  It should allow those nations which stabbed America in the back to bid on those contracts—correct?  But that policy is hypocritical and President Bush believes that nations that undermine American policy must pay a price.  So, he does the honest thing and refuses to allow France, Germany and Russia the right to bid on the contracts. 

The point of all this?  In one sense it is very simple:  If you choose to be honest in your foreign policy, you will be charged with being a unilateralist.  If you choose to be honest in your foreign policy, you will be charged with conducting a “cowboy” foreign policy.  I am not certain I always agree with President Bush’s manner of doing things.  But the one thing you cannot say is that he is hypocritical.  When he says he will defeat a bad treaty—Kyoto—he does it.  When he says he will enforce the 17 UN resolutions, he does it.  When he says he will not do business with those nations which undermine US foreign policy, he does that.  Perhaps all of Washington needs a fresh dose of such honesty. 

See Brooks’ editorial in the New York Times (13 December 2003).

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THE KYOTO PROTOCOL—IS IT WORTH SAVING?

The 1997 protocol was the major international response to global warming that sought to provide a framework for collective international action.  It required nations to curb emissions linked to global warming.  President Clinton’s administration negotiated the treaty but cynically never sent it to the Senate for ratification.  About two years ago, President Bush said he would never send the treaty to the Senate, arguing that it is a bad treaty and a straightjacket for the industrial world.  About two weeks ago, Russia announced that it would not ratify the treaty either.  Therefore, it is probably a dead treaty.  The treaty has major flaws and for that reason, President Bush believed it was not worth saving.  Some thoughts on this treaty:

• First, in the treaty there are no emission limits on China and other big developing countries; and its emissions controls only extend out to 2012.  This seems odd, since the technology of energy continues to rapidly change and it really makes no sense to exclude China and India from these emission control standards.  China, for example, is the fastest growing economy in the world and it is burning energy at an equally proportional rate of growth.  It is difficult to defend omitting China from these standards. 

• Second, the protocol has been approved by 120 countries but was rejected by the US in 2001.  Without the US, the only way to reach the threshold for enactment under the treaty’s terms was with Russian participation.  If enacted, it would give industrialized nations until 2012 to reduce their combined emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases more than 5% below 1990 levels.  But with the US and Russia not bound by the treaty, those limits will never be reached. 

• Finally, the treaty is actually achieving some of its objectives without ever being enacted.  From Europe to Japan and the US, just the prospect of the treaty has resulted in legislation and new government and industry policies curbing emissions.

Fundamentally, the world community must decide whether the Kyoto protocol is the best way to deal with clean air needs and the apparent connection between burning fossil fuels and global warming (an issue where there remains no small amount of disagreement).  But to not hold China, the world’s fastest growing economy, to these standards is irrational.  Further, to make 2012 the cut off year, is short-sighted at best.  There is the need for new technologies and new approaches to meet the requirements to curb emissions.  The Kyoto protocol does not seem the wise way to do any of these things.

See Andrew Revkin, the New York Times (4 December 2003).

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THE PROMOTION OF SEXUALITY IN AMERICAN CULTURE

Few would argue with the proposition that American culture is a sexually saturated culture.  I want to share some positive and some negative thoughts about the state of sexuality within American culture.

• First, a genuinely positive note gives focus to Abercrombie and Fitch (A and F).  Its Christmas catalog, called the “2003 Christmas Field Guide,” which was advertised as “280 pages of moose, ice hockey, chivalry, group sex and more . . .,” was discontinued.  Did A and F blink?  Introduced in 1997, the “magalog,” as they call it, famous for trying to sell clothes with near-naked models, was released each quarter amid controversy.  With each issue there was protest and there was the usual A and F spin.  The Christmas issue was perhaps the most offensive, for it included a section entitled “Group Sex.”  Pictures of naked men and women together in the water accompanied a text that discusses “mixed-gender or same sex” encounters, not to mention group masturbation.  In short, A and F mixed Christmas, youth and pornography in this issue.  The response was powerful:  An unusual coalition of Christian, family and feminist groups struck back.  A boycott resulted and a Cincinnati-based organization called Citizens for Community Values made its pitch to A and F shareholders via ads in both USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.  The ad began, “Some corporations dump toxic chemicals into our rivers, others spit poisonous toxins into the air.  Then there’s Abercrombie and Fitch . . . actively flooding . . . today’s youth market with an overdose of sex and self-gratification.”  A and F has always fudged over criticisms, but not this time.  Financially, the company is struggling.  They are in the middle of the Christmas season, after months of decline in same-store sales, including a 13% drop for November.  Further the stock value of A and F has declined from the $28-31 range to $24 and a significant drop of $2.61 on 4 December.  For all of these reasons, A and F has pulled its Christmas magalog. Market forces combined with the boycott and adverse publicity forced A and F to blink.  In the words of one writer, A and F took “the X out of Xmas.” 

See the editorial in “Review and Outlook” in the Wall Street Journal (12 December 2003).

• Second, the term now being used in American culture to describe sexual chic is “metrosexuality.”  I have addressed this before on the program.  It largely refers to homosexual men setting the style and cultural agenda for urban, professional men.  In the words of cultural critic, Mark Simpson, “[Metrosexuals] filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories.  And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire.”  Further, he defines the term “metrosexual” as a “young man with money to spend, living in or within easy reach of a metropolis—because that’s where all the best shops, gyms and hairdressers are.”  The point?  The metrosexual has taken himself “as his own love object and pleasure as his sexual preference.”  Quite frankly, the term “metrosexual” is a repulsive term, seething with the self-love of narcissism, evoking Narcissus of Greek mythology, the young man who pined away staring at his image in a pool and was transformed into a beautiful flower that bears his name.  In short, “metrosexual” fits with the self-indulgent, self-centered, selfish autonomy of our Postmodern world.  It promotes a thoroughly decadent lifestyle that will ultimately be self-destructive, because it cannot be sustained.  The ravages of age and disease will eventually demonstrate how silly metrosexuality really is.  It is further evidence of the sad state of our sexually saturated culture. 

See William Safire’s helpful comments in the New York Times Magazine (7 December 2003), p. 30.

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