By Dan Eggen
Monday, October 13, 2008
P resident Bush has hosted a parade of friendly foreign leaders at the White House over the past month, but today he welcomes perhaps one of his closest overseas buddies: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusco ni.
The meeting is likely to be a warm one. During a visit by Bush to Rome in June, the two leaders showered each other with praise during a gregarious news conference at a Renaissance villa.
The charismatic Berlusconi -- a media tycoon who was booted out of office in 2006, only to reclaim power in May -- was the first European leader to back the Iraq war and has remained stalwart in support of Bush despite the U.S. president's deep unpopularity in Italy. Berlusconi has even suggested that Bush could be a visiting professor at a university he has proposed.
"I have gotten to know President Bush very well," Berlusconi said in June. "I consider him to be a very close friend, a very unique person. . . . He's always shown that he has been able to be very close to those friends of his who have shared his ideals."
Bush and first lady Laura Bush are returning the favor by arranging today's Columbus Day visit to the White House. After an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn, the two leaders will share a news conference, a meeting in the Oval Office and an official dinner in the State Dining Room.
Julianne Smith, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the relationship is on par with Bush's close ties to former British prime minister Tony Blair.
"They've had moments where they've disagreed," Smith said. "But by and large, Berlusconi is with Bush, and they see the world much the same way. . . . I'm sure it will be a nice farewell."
Alas, the widening financial panic is likely to intrude. Berlusconi caused a small international incident Friday when he suggested that world leaders might consider closing financial markets in response to the meltdown; he said later in the day that he was only referring to rumors he heard on the radio.
Sunshine and VotesWhile John McCain and Barack Obama continue to battle for votes in hotly contested Florida, Bush traveled to the Sunshine State on Friday for a closed GOP fundraiser and to meet with a dozen Cuban American activists.
The gathering at Havana Harry's in Miami was labeled as official, rather than political, business. Bush, who has tended to the GOP's Cuban exile base in South Florida since the 2000 election, told the activists that his administration would continue to hold the line on its strict Cuban trade and travel embargo.
"Our government has been very clear about our strategy, and that is, is that we will change the embargo strategy only when the government of Cuba lets the people of Cuba express themselves freely," Bush said.
But the political landscape in South Florida has been shifting in recent years, and Democrats have hopes that they can draw some Cuban Americans away from the Republican Party, in part because of Bush's hard-line embargo policy.
Indeed, GOP Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen-- three of South Florida's most prominent Cuban American politicians -- were notably absent from the presidential itinerary on Friday. The Diaz-Balart brothers, both of whom are facing serious Democratic challengers, had to attend their own Miami fundraiser hosted by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).
On the Bike TrailBack in Washington on Saturday, Bush welcomed a new companion on one of his mountain-bike excursions at Virginia's Fort Belvoir: Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new chief of U.S. Central Command.
After returning to the White House's South Lawn, Petraeus posed for photos with other cyclists, including Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward P. Lazear, who regularly rides with Bush.
Petraeus, who oversaw a dramatic decrease in violence in Iraq, asked Lazear to do what he could to help the plunging U.S. economy, according to a White House pool report. Yes, sir!
Art Imitating LifeAs if the economy and the polls weren't causing Bush enough trouble, now he has to contend with a new Oliver Stone movie. "W.," which stars Josh Brolin as the president, opens in theaters Thursday.
Trailers already airing on television make it clear that the film will have plenty of less-than-flattering moments, including depictions of Bush's youthful drinking, conflicts with his father and his ongoing battle with the English language. Another scene revisits the moment in April 2004 when Bush, queried at a news conference, was unable to think of a mistake he had made since Sept. 11, 2001.
Yet a handful of early reviews suggest the movie is less critical than might be expected from Stone, who is known for his liberal politics. Variety, the movie industry paper, called the film "a relatively even-handed, restrained treatment of recent politics," especially "considering Stone's reputation and Bush's vast unpopularity."
No word on the possibility of a screening at the White House movie theater.
Rodman MemorialA who's who of past and present GOP administrations, as well as other Washington notables, turned out at the Fort Myer Officers' Club Friday morning for a memorial service for Peter W. Rodman, a former assistant secretary of defense in the Bush administration who died of leukemia in August at 64.
The Post's Michael Abramowitz notes that Rodman was a quintessential Washington figure who was little known outside the Beltway but enormously influential and well liked inside, having served every Republican administration since Nixon. At 25, he was recruited to the White House by then-national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger, who had supervised his undergraduate thesis at Harvard. As his special assistant, Rodman was one of Kissinger's confidants and kept the detailed notes of the diplomacy that led to the opening to China and other events that formed the basis of Kissinger's memoirs.
Rodman later served as State Department policy planning director in the Reagan administration, on the National Security Council staff for George H.W. Bush and as assistant secretary of defense under Donald H. Rumsfeld. After leaving the administration in 2007, Rodman became a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he managed to finish an account of presidential leadership in foreign policy before he died. "Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush" will be published next year by Random House.
Among the many Washington figures who attended his service were Rumsfeld, former diplomat L. Paul Bremer, former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Bush aide Elliott Abrams and Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman. The speakers included Brookings President Strobe Talbott, former National Review editor John O'Sullivan and Kissinger, who described Rodman as his "surrogate son."
Quote of the Week"We'll get through this deal."
-- President Bush, Oct. 9, referring to the global financial crisis
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