WASHINGTON, 6 July — It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. The Republican president began his new term in office with blessings from conservative leaders in the Senate. Now they are crossing swords with the administration on the president’s foreign policy.
The problem seems to have started when President George W. Bush met Russian President Vladimir Putin: “I looked the man in the eye; I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. . . . I was able to get a sense of his soul. . . . He’s an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family. We share a lot of values,” Bush said June 16, following his meeting with Putin.
To an old Cold War warrior such as Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relation’s Committee, the president’s words meant trouble: “Mr. Putin is far from deserving the powerful political prestige and influence that comes from an excessively personal endorsement by the president of the United States,” Sen. Helms said in quick response to Bush’s announcement.
But the Bush/Helms rift does not stop there. Not only has Helms scolded Bush for getting too friendly with the Russian president, he has also blocked the nominations of three of the top five officials at the treasury department in a dispute with the White House over trade policy.
This is quite a departure from the man who told a conservative conference in February when he gave thanks to heaven that “we have a new president, on whom we can rely to work with us — not against us — in advancing America’s interests in the world.”
A Senate Republican aide told Arab News yesterday that the media is reading far too much into Sen. Helm’s recent scuffles with the White House. “He really does like the president and wants to be helpful,” the aide said. “He’s not looking to pick fights at all. With Putin, he’s just being true to his nature.”
At a recent Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Helms again scolded the president for his praise of Putin, a former Soviet KGB chief: “We must not forget that under Mr. Putin’s leadership, the press has once again felt the jackboot of repression; arms control treaty obligations remain unfulfilled and violated; dangerous weapons technologies have been transferred to rogue states; Georgia’s and Ukraine’s security has been threatened; and, a brutal, indiscriminate military campaign in Chechnya continues unabated,” Sen. Helms said.
Words that definitely put him at odds with the president and his sense of Putin’s soul.
Meanwhile, over at the Treasury, people are also trying to put a good spin on the Bush-Helms rift.
A spokesman for the Treasury Secretary said the department and the White House “are working hard to address Senator Helms’ concerns” on the trade issue so that the nominees can be voted on by the Senate. An administration source said Sen. Helms wanted the White House to come up with a “regulatory fix” for the trade issue but talks are now focused on devising new legislation to address his concerns.
The Bush-Helms rift has become so raucous that the liberal press has taken to defending the administration’s conservative president against the very conservative Helms. A Washington Post columnist recently summed up the situation by saying: “The worrisome thing about Bush is not, as his reactionary critics have it, that he is an idiot who can’t get anything right. He has, especially in foreign policy, gotten it mostly right. He effectively warned China not to try to eat Taiwan, which may avert a war. He moved the international conversation on global warming out of a dead end by burying the Kyoto protocol. He has made these decisions largely, it seems, on gut, and his gut serves him well.”
Senator Helm’s press person did not get back to Arab News in time to respond to this observation.
