What's Next, A Gay Western?

Yeah…imagine having a “State Of The Union” speech AND press conference also, even though, apparently, Russian President Vlad Putin did that last night.

I thought the end of Rose Gottemoeller’s news article/opinion column, in which she contrasts both Bush and Putin, was particularly interesting.

Most interesting, perhaps, were the silences. This is the year when Russian holds the presidency of the G8, and the United States is a prominent member of the G8 -- one of those "fat-cat" countries that Putin pointed to in his remarks. Remarkable, therefore, that Bush said not a word about Russia or the G8 in his address, as if the issues so prominent for his G8 partners, especially energy security in Europe, had no meaning for the United States of America.

The Kremlin should not feel so bad about this, since Bush also failed to mention that other great Asian power, China, a country figuring prominently in Pentagon assessments of future threats to the United States. If China was not mentioned, then the bar for making it into the speech must have been high indeed. Isolationism, that American disease that Bush railed against in the speech, appears to be a danger in his own case.

In the end, Bush and Putin seemed to be operating in separate universes. This is fitting, perhaps, for two such different countries, one a great Eurasian power more concentrated on its neighborhood than anywhere else, the other a North American superpower whose culture and messianism both attract and repel the rest of the world.

But the separation is not comforting when we have so much work to do. Energy security alone could keep us busy for decades, and there is the small matter of thousands of nuclear warheads and tons of nuclear materials still left from the Cold War. Communicable disease, the fight against terrorism, unfinished conflicts the world over -- we two, together, have much to occupy us -- if our separate universes do not hold us apart.

Actually, I have to admit that, if Bush had had a press conference after the speech, even one carefully choreographed as per usual, I would have tried to watch it. Under ordinary circumstances, watching Dubya destroying the English language in a rehearsed speech is something I can only tolerate with the aid of hot and cold running shots at a bar and a basket full of beer nuts. However, the extra entertainment value from making him actually do something that could send him “off message” might be worth it.

(One more thing - I shortened Putin's name for layout reasons on the page...I have no idea if that's a nickname or not.)