Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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Headline Writers' Lament

Monday, June 18, 2001

The National Association of Professional Headline Writers had gotten ahead of the curve. They had all the headlines regarding the President's first European trip written, typeset, and pasted into place.

I KNOW everyone does this by computer now, but allow me the romantic imagery.

Headlines such as these were in the can:
-- "Bush having a Dickens of a Time with Great Expectations of First Foreign Trip"
-- "Europe Looks Like Battle Scene of 'Les Mis' as Bush Arrives."
-- "Bush Demands British PM Narrow Issue Discussions: "Blair? Which Project?"
-- "NATO Decimated; Leaders Die Laughing at Bush Missile Defense Plan"
-- "France's Chirac Calls Bush's Charm, 'Offensive'"
-- "US-Russian Relations Collapse at Bush Accusation of Putin on the Ritz"

None of those were even close. Of course, the Europeans continued to hide behind the US refusal to cave into the rules of the Kyoto Treaty (even though only Romania - ROMANIA - has ratified it) the rest of the trip was surprisingly favorable.

The pre-game analyses by US political and diplomatic writers were so far off the mark they hired the California Spin Team of Lehane-Fabiani who said in a statement, "Yeah, but they are still way better at predictions than stock market analysts."

Maybe , but not much.

On the Secret Decoder Ring page there is a great movie poster and a roundup by Reuters of European commentary following the Bush visit, plus all the puns involved in the headlines.

The fact is, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card got it right when he said, "Every President is a caricature in Europe before his first trip." Maybe Andy should start providing stock tips.

As to the demonstrations, they seemed to have had less to do with President Bush's attendance than they did to the attendance of a roving band of professional rioters which got its training in that historical home of anarchist thinking, Seattle.

The aforementioned Tony "Landslide" Blair, upon finding out that many of the more violent protesters were Brits (acting like regular soccer fans) said, "This effectively is an anarchists' traveling circus that goes from summit to summit with the sole purpose of causing as much mayhem as possible."

Of course the most off-base predictions were about the meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Just wait until he has to speak to Putin," we were told. "That Putin meeting is gonna be some trouble, boy," we were warned. "Putin is going to hang Bush out to dry on missile defense," just EVERYONE said.

Frank Bruni's NY Times lead seemed to back up those warnings: "Russian President Vladimir V. Putin cautioned President Bush today about developing a missile defense shield without Moscow's consent, telling Mr. Bush that such an action could seriously strain relations between the two countries."

But, here was Bruni's second graf: "But that warning was a surprisingly gentle one, tucked into a news conference here at which the two leaders' manners and words were striking for their warmth and relative ease."

The most accurate headline was the one atop a piece filed shortly after the President and Mrs. Bush arrived on the South Lawn on Saturday night: "A Content Bush Returns to White House."

Here's an interesting take. Walter Russell Mead, writing in yesterday's LA Times pointed out that the whole European Union thing may be more bluster than substance: "Only four of the 15 member countries of the European Union have bigger GDP's than greater Los Angeles. U.S. trade with Mexico alone last year was equal to 65% of total U.S. commerce with the European Union. Of our five largest trading partners, only one is in Europe."

Maybe it's a good thing to have a President who likes to look first at our hemisphere.

New Subject: Remember the movie, "Reefer Madness?" The one we Baby Boomers were shown as part of the rainy-day program alternating with that movie about drunk driving? Well, it turns out it was all true.

A government report out of Nepal, after an exhaustive week-long investigation by a two-member commission appointed by the new king, found that Crown Prince Dipendra smoked "a special kind of cigarette prepared with a mixture of hashish and another unnamed black substance" just before he went on his rampage.

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