Americans. Global ecologists. Human rights advocates. Those who believe in using force to end foreign tyranny. Even Guardian readers. All these and more should be rooting for Tony Blair in Thursday's election in Britain. Blair has an intriguing narrative on the nature of power and political ideas to complete in a third term as prime minister.
Start with Americans: Yes, Blair proved to be a reliable ally for both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. But other British leaders have accomplished that. More important is Blair's consistent, clearly articulated goal of making American power more useful -- and acceptable -- to Europe and the rest of the world, whoever is president.
"Like it or not, if we don't have America in this deal, we won't have any progress," he told me in February in a characteristic comment on global warming and the Kyoto protocol. "We can grandstand on this, or try to work out something with the country that happens to invest the most in science and technology on how to move to a different type of economy."
Only a global dialogue that includes the United States, China and India -- all currently outside the Kyoto process -- can bring meaningful progress on global warming, Blair suggested.
The next British prime minister will also be chairman of the Group of Eight industrial nations and of the European Union beginning in June and will have an important voice on energy and the environment, aid to Africa, democracy in the Middle East and other global issues. A reelected Blair could be counted on to remind Bush and others that "the best idealism is based on realism," as he said to me.
Despite his choirboy looks and relentless appeals to our better instincts, Blair is a hardheaded politician. "He does not wake up every morning wondering what he did right or wrong the previous day. He wakes up figuring out how he will do in his enemies today," a British diplomat who observed Blair closely told me more than a decade ago. The soundness of the judgment has endured.
That essential toughness -- portrayed in a largely hostile British press as ruthless, amoral ambition -- helps make Blair the most successful transformational leader I can think of in international politics today.
He has completed the overhaul of the Labor Party into a modern, centrist organization that has lost its utopianism and its once-durable habit of losing elections. Blair and his chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, have overseen a remarkable economic boom in Britain as continental Europe has slumped. Blair is committed to Britain's being a bridge between Europe and the United States and a catalyst in developing a political equivalent to the economic interdependence of globalization.
All this might mean little to voters upset about crowded public hospitals, antiquated transport systems and British involvement in an unpop-
ular war in Iraq. The list of things untransformed or botched after two Labor parliamentary vic-
tories should be worrisome, if not fatal, for the incumbents.
But a lackluster campaign by a Conservative Party that is still divided over Britain's place in Europe, along with the vibrant economy and the huge structural advantage that stems from Labor's present 161-seat majority in the House of Commons, should bring Blair victory on Thursday.
"This will be close going down to the wire," one of Blair's closest advisers predictably predicted to me weeks ago. He wasn't going to make it seem easy before the fact. Blair's biggest problem, he said, would boil down to "whether or not the Guardian-reading public will stay away from the polls in protest" because of Iraq, Blair's rubbishing of past Labor orthodoxy or the boredom bred by incumbency.
Many Americans will remember the lively, literate and leftist Guardian newspaper best for the letter-writing campaign it organized last autumn to persuade Ohio voters to back John Kerry. The theory for such interventionism abroad was that foreigners deserved a say in the election of an American president who commands so much power globally.
The Guardian campaign did seem to influence voters: Some Ohioans said they resented the "meddling" and would be sure to vote for Bush, in the state that sealed his victory. So returning the favor to the Guardian's public, however modestly, is not without its own backfiring peril.
But I say, chaps, humor a Yank who wants to see Britain more active in European and global politics. A Blair victory is the best hope for a more stable and productive transatlantic relationship, with Britain as the fulcrum. And that, mates, is better than a slap in the face with a wet fish.
jimhoagland@washpost.com
