BUSH AS A WORLD SUCCESS

The first thing his wife would do if she became president, Bill Clinton said in South Carolina last week, would be to dispatch him and the first President Bush on an around the world diplomatic mission to repair the damage done to America's reputation and influence by the policies of the current President Bush.

George H.W. Bush became friendly with the man who beat him in 1992 when they worked together to raise funds for tsunami relief.  But the elder Mr. Bush made it clear that neither Bill nor Hillary had ever discussed such a diplomatic mission with him, and he wouldn't have been interested if they had, because he strongly supports his son's foreign policy.

The episode reminds us that Bill Clinton's relationship with the truth remains problematic. 

The theme — that President Bush's policies, particularly with regard to the war in Iraq, have cost us the respect and support of our traditional allies — is an article of faith among Democrats.  But it is untrue, as Lee Myung-bak could attest.

Last week Mr. Lee, a conservative former mayor of Seoul, was elected president of South Korea in what was by far the biggest landslide in the relatively brief history of democratic elections in that country.

Mr. Lee's victory eases a headache for policymakers in Washington.  The very left wing government of outgoing President Noh Moo-hyun [who insists on spelling his name "Roh" to avoid how it's actually pronounced] frequently undermined Bush administration efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program. 

Mr. Lee's views about how to deal with Kim Jong Il's dictatorship are much more in sync with those of President Bush.  "I assure you there will be a change from the past government's practice of avoiding criticism of North Korea and unilaterally flattering it," Mr. Lee said at his first news conference after his landslide win.

Mr. Lee's election strengthens the relationship of the United States in general and this administration in particular with a key U.S. ally.

Liberals dislike President Bush's foreign policy, so they assume foreign leaders do too.  This assumption has little relationship to fact.

Since the war in Iraq began, Bush friendly governments have been ousted at the polls in Spain, Italy, and Australia.  But governments friendlier to the United States have been elected in France, Germany, Canada, and now South Korea.  Britain and Japan have changed prime ministers, but remain firm friends.

Germany ranks 7th, France 9th, South Korea 13th, and Canada 14th in gross domestic product, according to the CIA World Factbook. They objectively are more important countries than Italy (10th), Spain (16th), and Australia (19th).  So closer relationships with Germany, France, South Korea and Canada more than cancel out more distant relationships with Italy, Spain and Australia.

There is also the distance traveled.  During the Bush administration, former critics have come much closer towards us than friends have slipped away.  France under Jacques Chirac, Germany under Gerhard Schroeder, and Canada under Jean Chretien had explicitly anti-American policies.  New French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are unapologetic U.S. allies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel more cautiously so. 

Though Italy in 2006 and Australia last month exchanged conservative governments for more liberal ones, their relations with and policy toward the United States have changed little.  Only in Spain has there been a dramatic shift from a pro-American leader to an anti-American one.

And, we ought to note, in March of 2003, the government of Iraq was more hostile to us than any other government in the world.  The current government in Iraq is much more friendly.

Public opinion of the United States in the Moslem world remains low, according the annual surveys conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, but, on balance, has improved a bit since before the invasion of Iraq. 

The percentage of those who view the United States favorably has plunged from 30 percent to 9 per cent in Turkey between 2002 and 2007, and from 25 percent to 20 percent in Jordan.  But those viewing the U.S. favorably has risen to 15 percent from 10 percent in Pakistan, from 6 percent to 21 percent in Egypt, and from 35 percent to 47 percent in Lebanon.

The dramatic change in the Moslem world since the invasion of Iraq has been the plunge in support for suicide bombings and for al Qaeda, Pew said.  Evidently, the most important part of Mr. Bush's foreign policy is succeeding.