In U.S. Visit, Brown To Urge 'New Deal'
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
LONDON, March 2 -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrives in Washington this week to press a "global new deal" that he hopes will shore up his sagging poll numbers at home and solidify his place as the international leader of efforts to surmount the deepening financial crisis.
On Tuesday, Brown will become the first European leader to meet with Obama at the White House, and he will address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
"He is hoping to be seen as a genuine global leader," said Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. "He wants to show that he is the big man on the big stage when the big crisis hits."
A month before Brown hosts President Obama and leaders of the world's major economies in London on April 2, he will press his case for an overhaul of the world's financial regulations and institutions.
"President Obama and I will discuss this week a global new deal, whose impact can stretch from the villages of Africa to reforming the financial institutions of London and New York," Brown wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.
Obama's decision to meet with Brown before other European leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been interpreted in Britain as a symbolic victory.
But Peter Kellner, head of the British polling firm YouGov, said that although Brown's meeting with Obama is important, it may not be as important as his address to Congress.
"These things are normally mostly ceremonial, but Brown's speech to Congress is the biggest single event of the trip," Kellner said.
Obama has yet to spell out the U.S. position on revamping the global financial system or how he views Brown's calls for an international global regulator to oversee financial markets. But Obama and Brown have responded to the financial crisis with similar economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.
"The president said in September that we have to act together in helping to stimulate the economies of the G-20, as well as ensuring that there's some financial rules of the road so that we don't find ourselves in the same position a few years down the line," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in Washington on Monday. "And I think those are the topics that are likely to dominate both the meeting and the working lunch that they'll have."
Of concern to Europeans, Kellner said, is what many perceive as Congress's tendency to be inward-looking and protectionist.
Some Europeans say they suspect that Obama also leans toward protectionism, but there are larger worries that Congress could scuttle any plans Obama puts forward to contribute to the international economic rescue.
