The Bush quiz

Former President George Bush was in Berlin this week to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. The president who lived and breathed foreign affairs deservedly was named an honorary citizen of the city that was the Cold War’s Ground Zero and hailed for his role in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the son who would be president continues to behave as though the biggest problem with foreign affairs is that there’s too darned many foreigners involved. Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s poor performance on the global politics pop quiz sprung by a Boston TV reporter last week was a slip. His performance since suggests he’s providing his own banana peels.

In that interview, Gov. Bush was unable to name the leaders of Chechnya (Aslan Maskhadov), India (Atal Behari Vajpayee) or Pakistan (Gen. Pervez Musharraf), and, in what could well have been a lucky stab, came up only with the “Lee” part of Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui. Not exactly household names, but, given that those countries are among the most inflamed of current hot spots, certainly White Household names.

Worse still, worse even than Gov. Bush’s “I don’t know and I don’t care” attitude during the interview, was his feeble attempt to assess the situation in Pakistan, his view that “this guy” (Gen. Musharraf) will bring stability and that that’s “good news” for the subcontinent. Military coups are hardly good news for democracy and nuclear weapons in the hands of a dictator who refuses to hold elections is the kind of stability the world can do without.

But what should have the GOP frontrunner’s supporters wondering if they’re backing the wrong horse is the way he’s handled this flub. Gov. Bush could have come out this week and made this all go away with a brief foreign-policy presentation: How he’d keep Russia from backsliding into totalitarianism while ending the slaughter of Chechen civilians; how he, as an opponent of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, would convince India and Pakistan to stop testing; how, either through engagement or quarantine or some combination of the two, he’d prevent Communist China from swallowing democratic Taiwan. He could have shown he’s a fast learner.

Instead, he whined about being sandbagged — sandbagged by a reporter who took him at word some six months ago that he was working closely with a crack team of foreign-policy advisors to get up to presidential speed. This was followed up by his utterly silly, good-ol-boy remark that the only thing more offensive than the liberal Washington press is the ultra-liberal Boston press.

It is ironic that the father who lost the presidency because his acute interest in the foreign was percieved as a complete disinterest in the domestic has a son who thinks he can win it by acting as though the most boring thing in the world is the world.