-Caveat Lector-
>From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28415-2002Jun10.html
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washingtonpost.com
Global Conservatives Find a Congenial Host in Bush
By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, June 11, 2002; Page A23
Guess who came to dinner.
At the White House last night, President Bush and the Republican Party hosted a
dinner for about 50 conservative leaders from around the world. The meeting, in the
White House's State Dining Room, was the right's answer to the Clinton
administration's "Third Way" meetings with left-leaning world leaders.
But while President Bill Clinton's gatherings tended toward wonkish discourse on
public administration, the group Bush assembled last night had some spice.
On the invite list was Taiwan politician Lien Chang, chairman of the Kuomintang
Party and the island's former vice president. China experts said it was the first time
a
leader from Taiwan has been invited to an official White House event since the
United States normalized relations with China in 1979. China, which had no
representative at the dinner, was not amused.
Also breaking bread were rivals to two of the European leaders Bush has been
working hard to win over. Iain Duncan Smith, the head of Britain's Conservative Party
and Prime Minister Tony Blair's main opponent, attended the dinner with William
Hague, Blair's opponent in the last election. They were joined by officials from
Germany's opposition Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union, who hope
this fall to defeat Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, with whom Bush shared strudel in
Berlin last month.
Then there was former Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, whose request to
visit the White House earlier this year was denied because of his nationalist rhetoric
and flirtation with far-right forces during his unsuccessful reelection campaign.
Clinton enjoyed similar hobnobbing with European counterparts, holding a series of
"Third Way" meetings in 1998 and 1999 with the leaders of center-left governments
of Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and others. Now those leaders
are mostly out of work, and Bush's dinner demonstrated the shift.
"Clearly there's been an abrupt about-face in political fortunes," said Will Marshall,
one of the architects of Clinton's Third Way. "By the late 1990s, the U.S. and most of
the European Union was controlled by center-left parties or coalitions. Now the
majority are in conservative hands."
In fact, left-leaning leaders convened in Britain last weekend to nurse their wounds.
Blair hosted an assembly of the no longer powerful: Clinton, former Italian prime
minister Giuliano Amato and members of fallen left governments of the Netherlands
and France, among others.
But while Clinton's Third-Way meetings were gatherings of sitting government
leaders, Bush's dinner list included a large number of opposition figures from
southern Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The dinner was part of the two-day
meeting in Washington of the International Democrat Union, a collection of
conservative parties from 60 countries.
It was the first time the conservative group, founded in 1983 by Margaret Thatcher,
President George H.W. Bush and others, met with a president at the White House.
The group visited the White House in 1985, but President Ronald Reagan was
recovering from surgery and did not meet with them. This time, the group received
an audience with Bush, senior White House officials and an assortment of corporate
leaders from Lockheed Martin Corp., Philip Morris Cos., Coca-Cola Co. and
elsewhere.
The most intriguing invitee was Taiwan's Lien. China hands said officials from
Taiwan usually are not granted visas to come here, much less dinner in the White
House, because of fears of antagonizing China.
"It's part of a trend by this administration towards upgrading unofficial relations
with
Taiwan," said China expert Jim Mann of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, noting Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's recent meeting with a
Taiwan official in Florida. When the Kuomintang Party was in power, the leader
gained an audience with Vice President Dan Quayle -- but not in the White House.
Told of Lien's invitation to dinner, Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng said he
had "taken note of the relevant report," and he did not sound pleased. "There is only
one China in the world," he said. "This is a fact acknowledged by an overwhelming
majority of world, including the United States . . . We hope the U.S. will stick to its
one-China policy."
One person not likely to get a dinner invitation from President Bush anytime soon is
David Walker, who runs the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog
agency. Word is the White House is none too pleased with a report the GAO just
finished on allegations of White House vandalism in the final days of the Clinton
administration. The Bush White House, which is already in a legal quarrel over the
GAO's probe into its energy task force, had voluminous objections to the agency's
findings about alleged vandalism by Clinton aides.
The report was given Friday to Rep. Robert L. Barr Jr. (R-Ga.), who requested the
probe and plans to release the findings later this week. But this much is already
known: Of the report's 240 pages, 70 are Bush aides' response and rebuttal.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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