Britain

In a thoughtful piece in today's Financial Times about how the anti-European impulses of David Cameron's Tories may lead to a chill with Washington, Philip Stephens writes that "[President] Obama is unsentimental about alliances." I think it goes further. I think that Obama is just plain unsentimental about most aspects of his professional life. (One senior administration who compared Obama's "synthetic intelligence" favorably with that of Bill Clinton, said Obama was one of the "coolest characters I have ever seen in that kind of job. He places an exceptional emphasis on rationality and calm analysis.")

Among those things impacted by Obama's cool rationality are all of America's international relationships ... and in particular the role of history in those relationships. While cognizant of historical context in an academic sense, Obama seems not to place much stock in old traditions be they of friendship or of enmity. The stirring shoulder to shoulder images of the Second World War, while rhetorically rolled out for suitable occasions, are not part of his life experience. This is a guy, after all, who entered high school after the Vietnam War was over and who did not begin his professional, post-law school life until after the Cold War was over. George W. Bush, by contrast, is fully 15 years older than Obama, son of a World War II veteran who was a traditional Atlanticist and cold warrior. Obama is a very different breed of cat from what we have seen before.

That's not to say he's indifferent to alliances. It's not to say he doesn't appreciate the importance of NATO or old friendships. But the impulse to engage former and current enemies, to sign on to the G20 as a replacement for the G8, to seek a different kind of relationship with Israel, to give the Cairo speech, to travel early to Africa-all these steps suggest a willingness not to be captive of the mold of his predecessors. Imagine ... right now the United States arguably has a better relationship with French leaders than with the leaders of the U.K. or Germany.

As Stephens rightly points out in the FT, as far as the U.K. goes, this trend is only likely to grow more pronounced once David Cameron takes office as he presumably will. Cameron and Obama got off to a bad start, they are from opposite sides of the ideological spectrum, and to the degree Cameron and his colleagues undercut the Lisbon Treaty and push back from the table of Europe, they will be both making life more complicated for the United States and all their allies and pursuing a very different world view from the U.S. president.

When asked by other colleagues in the diplomatic community who has the U.K. brief in the U.S. government, the current U.K. ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, has jokingly replied that he hardly knows because it doesn't seem to be a top priority for anyone. This is no doubt due to the fact that the relationship works pretty well and there are few sore spots crying out for immediate attention. But should Cameron come to power and behave as he implies he will, Sheinwald's successor could feel even more neglected and the Cameron administration is likely to get a cold shoulder that makes Gordon Brown's need for five pleas for a meeting with Obama at the U.N. General Assembly before he got one seem positively warm and inviting.

U.S.-U.K. history and cultures are such that the relationship will always be different from that we have other countries. But it seems quite possible that with an unsentimental post-modern president in the White House who seems destined to have a chilly partnership with the odds-on favorite to be the next Prime Minister of the U.K. the special relationship will be considerably less special in the future than it has been at any time in recent memory. 

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I think for a lot of Americans, particularly those of a more liberal inclination, like Michael Moore or my mother, there was a kind of flickering hope earlier in the week that America might be on the verge of exiting the Middle East once and for all.

The loud tick tick tick of the withdrawal timeline has been audible throughout Iraq for months. And with the debate triggered by the McChrystal Report and the pushback calls for more troops seemed to be generating from Vice President Biden and others within the administration, it seemed we might be moving toward a decision by the President that would have us narrowing the mission in Afghanistan. This argued many ... including conservatives like George Will, for that matter ... could only reasonably lead to our withdrawal from that misbegotten place.

And they may even hoped, the United States might finally be ready to pressure the Israelis into backing down on settlements as a way of getting to serious talks about a peace agreement with the Palestinians. No Jewish settlements equals lasting peace settlement, seems to be the calculus there.

Then, reality crept back into the picture. First, it was hinted at when Obama ... at least temporarily ... backed down on pressuring the Israelis on the settlements. But then it came roaring back into focus with a vengeance thanks to the "news" of Iran's second nuclear enrichment facility. Never mind that Obama was briefed on this facility before he became president, that allied intelligence services had known about it for years and that everyone knew Iran was lying about its existence all along. There comes a moment in these things when their lying and our willingness to lie to ourselves or at least to our publics slip out of whack. And that's when the truth creeps out and spoils the party.

And so as the week draws to a close, the picture now looks somewhat different. Iran is revealed again to be a liar and immediately responds by saying "we won't back down." America, Britain, and France make statements condemning Iran, but they range from bland and process oriented (Obama) to bold but toothless (Sarkozy and Brown). Meanwhile, Angela Merkel (who my sources tell me is not one of Obama's faves in Europe to begin with) and the Russians and the Chinese can't or won't make it to the "shocked, shocked" photo op.

Russia and China are the "or" and the "else" of any international threat to Iran. Absent them, countries like the United States and our European allies can only stomp their feet or introduce sanctions that will be largely ineffective. So this problem festers on and looks very likely to get much worse before it gets better.

Meanwhile, days after the Untied States votes to triple aid to Pakistan, the Washington Post runs a story today about the growing anti-Americanism in that country and how it threatens our goals there. Given that Pakistan is where our real enemies are, this reminds us that this is the AfPak War and regardless of what we want to do in Afghanistan, we will for many years be grappling with the much, much bigger problems associated with nuclear Pakistan.

And on top of it all, the Iran revelation makes Bibi Netanyahu (see today's other post) one of the big winners of this week, proving that while Ahmadinejad lies about the Holocaust and nukes, Netanyahu has been accurately characterizing the Iranian threat. Further, it is becoming clearer and clearer to the Obama team that however difficult the Israelis may be, they are matched step for step by the Palestinians.

In short, for those of you who thought we might have been on the verge of getting the heck out of Dodge, reconsider. We can draw down troops in Iraq, but there will be 50,000 there when Obama's successor arrives in office. We can narrow the focus in Afghanistan, but there will be U.S. military dealing with threats in AfPak when Obama's successor arrives in office. We can extend the "unclenched fist" to Iran, but they will spit in it and represent a deep and lasting threat to regional security for many years, certain well past whenever Obama's successor arrives in office. And Israel and Palestine may make peace ... although that seems a long way off...but the volatility in the region will ensure that sooner or later everyone will be clear that they are not the lynchpin of the region's stability issues.  (Although they are certainly an important one.)

The decisions Obama makes about Afghanistan, about dealing with a difficult ally in Pakistan, about how to forge an effective international coalition to contain Iran (which will involve coming up with credible, meaningful consequences if they fail to fall into line), and about just how to get two difficult parties to accept the peace they both need and want, will play a large role in determining whether Obama is around for another 3 or another 7 years. But it seems clear that almost regardless of which path he chooses, his successor will face many of the same problems.

A week that began with murmurs of hope among those who would like to see America disengaged from the region -- a group with which I am very sympathetic not to mention one that includes plenty of my relatives -- is distressingly ending with a slightly different tone, better characterized by the shrieks of noted foreign policy observer Mathew Broderick at the climactic moment of "The Producers." "No way out!" he cries, "No way out!"

I'm not always a pessimist. But I am right now.

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Earlier this year, a veteran member of the European Parliament from Britain's Conservative Party, made news when he stood up to British Prime Minister-in-waiting David Cameron's alliance with right wing Polish politician Michal Kaminski. That MEP, Edward McMillan-Scott, accused Kaminski of being a "fascist" with "anti-Semitic, homophobic, and racist links." 

As it happens, there seems to be evidence that lends considerable support to all of those assertions. And how has the likely next leader of the United Kingdom rewarded the courage of this stalwart of his party who has served for a quarter century? A gold watch perhaps? No, he has given him his walking papers, kicking him out of the Conservative Party. 

Such is the character of the man who, according to this week's polls, is the heavy favorite to move to 10 Downing Street after the next general election. It reveals much about him as a man and about the kind of party he wants to run. So much for a system that thrives on debate and cherishes honesty. 

Of course if the only way to cover up the flaws in your record are with lies or enforced silence, I suppose silence is a better choice, even if it is not necessarily the one you would expect from a former flack like Cameron. In this case however, the silence speaks volumes ... not only about Cameron but about the flock of sheep who now run his party ... and one can only hope this public political execution has the same effect on the British electorate that ill-considered beheadings have done in times past. 

Whatever happened to perspectives like that of an on-again, off-again Tory from the last century who said: "The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is." (And do you think Cameron would have made it above the rank of State Secretary for Snooker and Other Silly Games in a Churchill government?)

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As a general rule, I'm not so keen on the way Americans go about elections. My two biggest problems are that election campaigns go on for ever-longer periods and that our campaign finance rules are simply a way to dress up rampant corruption in volumes of complex code. I'm also not so keen on the electoral college, which ought to show up on Antiques Roadshow any day now were it not for the fact that I suspect it wouldn't fetch much of a valuation.

That said, one thing America does pretty well is debate. I say this despite the tenor of recent debates and the debating skills of recent candidates. Airing differences between candidates in a televised forum is an important innovation in democracy. And it is one that has yet to come to the United Kingdom.

That seems to be changing though with reports that Tory Leader David Cameron and the LDP's Nick Clegg have now agreed to take part in a televised debate in the run up to the next election. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has thus far declined to join the fray and frankly, I don't blame him. First of all, while television is good for those with "cool" personalities, it is not so good for people with none whatsoever. Secondly, as it becomes increasingly clear that Brown's government gave a well-thought out wink and a nod to the Scottish Authorities release of Libyan bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, it is clear his team has manufactured yet another issue that can't work to their boss's advantage no matter how he addresses it.

That said, yesterday's statement that Brown "respected" the Scot decision to release the ailing terrorist certainly wasn't the way to calm the uproar over a mishandled mess that combines elements of placing compassion for a murderer over justice for his victims, alienating the U.K.'s principal ally and, no matter how many denials are made, currying favor with Libya's crackpot leader in exchange for better relations. On some level, for all the mouthwash about Megraghi's family's needs to see their dying relative (despite the unspeakable way he deprived hundreds of others of the same privilege), this is a situation in which it is clear that the Brown government has chosen to dance to the ka-ching of the cash register.

Given Brown's other bumbles (screwing up the British economy comes to mind) and the fact that David Cameron is a twit who will be an international embarrassment to the U.K. should he win the premiership, if you had to be someone on that stage you'd definitely want to be Clegg. But whatever the outcome of the exchange, it is a necessary exercise that ought to be part of the British electoral process ... and one which Brown should not be permitted to hide from.

Brown's associates argue he goes through the process of debate on the floor of the parliament every week. But for all its value "Question Time" has its own rules and its own ritual theater that invalidate it as the kind of debate to which British voters are entitled. And as the list of questions the average citizen or thinking journalist would want to ask these characters grows, the need for the debate grows more urgent and the prospect for a valuable exchange grows more compelling.

Let's see Brown defend playing footsie at a distance with Qaddafi. Let's see Cameron defend backing a racist right wing leader of the right in European parliament. This is one of those occasions where television is the best medium for providing both heat and light.

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I used to think David Cameron was just an empty suit. But it is increasingly clear that the former PR guy, is a spin-ster who ought to be ditched at the altar both by the British people and by the Obama administration. 

My first impression of his vacuousness came when I chaired a panel on which he spoke. It was substantiated over the past several years when, as Gordon Brown's popularity spiraled downward, Cameron gradually rose to become PM-presumptive. But a recent piece in the Guardian by distinguished British political scholar and commentator Timothy Garton Ash has cast Cameron in a new light revealing him to be, in the most charitable interpretation, a man of questionable judgment even for a politician.

At issue in Garton Ash's piece was Cameron's decision to move his Tory members of the European Parliament into a new political alliance called the European Conservatives and Reformists. Garton Ash casts this as a misguided move out of the mainstream but then gets into how Cameron helped to engineer the election of Poland's Michal Kaminski as the new group's leader. It's a complicated story which the Guardian column outlines well, but the bottom line is that after having failed to keep British conservatives in line behind Kaminki's candidacy to become the VP of the European Parliament, Cameron then threw his support behind Kaminski to lead the new right wing bloc.

So who is this Kaminski? Garton Ash writes:

In 1999, he visited Britain to present what is described as a gorget embossed with an image of the Virgin Mary to General Augusto Pinochet. "This was the most important meeting of my whole life. Gen Pinochet was clearly moved and extremely happy with our visit," Kaminski told the BBC's Polish service. In a short video clip from July 2000, he describes homosexuals as pedaly, a slang term roughly translatable as "queers" or "poofters".

In 2001, he became involved in one of Poland's greatest post-1989 historical controversies, about the murder in July 1941 of almost all the Jewish inhabitants of the Polish village of Jedwabne -- a murder committed by Polish villagers. As the local MP, he denounced the post-communist president Aleksander Kwasniewski for his readiness to apologise in Poland's name for this crime.

An interview with Kaminski appeared in a nasty rightwing weekly, Our Poland. In it, while acknowledging "the tragedy of the Holocaust", he is reported as saying the murder was committed by a handful of outcasts ("no decent person would be involved in burning Jews"), and that he will apologise if someone "from the Jewish side" apologises for what "the Jews" did during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland from 1939 to 1941. (According to the Observer, Kaminski denies having given the interview, but the editor of Our Poland says he did.)

Very nice. Garton Ash goes on to say that while he does not "allege that Kaminski himself is anti-Semitic" he does believe he was involved in some  "bad stuff." Got to love that British restraint. Personally, I have no hesitation suggesting that Kaminski is either anti-Semitic, pandering to anti-Semites or an insensitive jerk...and a more suitable choice for support by the British National Party than by the Conservatives. And what does all that make Cameron for supporting him? 

Well, in my book it makes him an even more dubious choice to be Britain's next prime minister than he was before and, should he attain that post, someone about whom the Obama administration ought to be very cautious. A pillar of leadership acumen he ain't.   

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Washington is a city of oxymorons. It is a city of garden variety morons, as well. On the oxymoron side we have old favorites like "military intelligence," "compassionate conservative," and "government organization." On the moron side...well, in U.S. politics we have morons on both sides. 

Now we have something new however, as in Washington the oxymorons and the morons are coming together in the form of America's latest reality television extravaganza (we really needed another): "Real World Washington." This is a unique double oxymoron in that it calls itself real but, like most reality TV, it is not...and because it is suggesting, fancifully, that there is somehow a connection between Washington and the real world. As for the morons, well you need only visit the bars around the DuPont Circle neighborhood location of the Real World set and you can view for yourself the cast in all their beer-soaked glory.

At first I wondered to myself how it was that a show like "The Real World" could have become MTV's longest-running hit, now in its 17th year. After all, it's pretty formulaic. Semi-attractive young adults including at least one or two with deep psychological problems are put together in a house in which they: drink, puke, appear to grope one another in grainy night-vision camera shots, and then fight about who groped whom.

Of course, thinking of it that way, I naturally started to wonder why it took so long for the show to come to the home of American politics which have been featuring all these activities for years. (For those of you who are more insensitive than I, insert Teddy Kennedy joke here. And for those of you who don't have the stomach for such humor but still want a laugh at the expense of all that Kennedy family groping, see this link about a new book on America's zany royal family.)

Once I started thinking about politicians and groping and the real world, however, my thoughts immediately drifted eastward, out over the Atlantic, and in the direction of the world's most famous aging libido, that of the host of this week's G8 Meeting, Silvio Berlusconi. This in turn led to a thunderbolt of inspiration akin to that which struck another famous Italian in the Berlusconi mold, Michael Corleone, when he first saw the ill-fated Apollonia Vitelli. What about the Real World Berlusconi-style? What about Real World L'Aquila? Once we get the G8 leaders to Italy, why don't we lock them in a room until they actually produce something productive? And let's put it all on video! Big Brother for Big Brother! 

And to keep it interesting we can add elements of other reality shows. For example, how about a taste of Real Housewives Berlusconi-style, while we're at it. Just locking Silvio and his really (justifiably) angry, estranged wife Veronica Lario in a house for the enjoyment of tv audiences everywhere would be irresistible.But throw her in with a bunch of other world leaders? See what happens when Silvio shoots an ill-considered glance in the direction of Michelle Obama? Who's wailing on him first? Veronica, Barack or Michelle? (My money is on Michelle.) Sadly, of course, Veronica is passing on the G8 Summit, forcing the Italians to turn the wife of their president to be the hostess for the affair.

We still have plenty of fun cast to choose from, however, given that the meetings in Italy will actually be attended by more than 25 countries, including all the G20. Just think of the potential gang we could feature in the house that meet the Real World formula for diversity and mayhem. 

• Of course, we start with the hard-partying Berlusconi. He may be 72 but he has the judgment and appetites of a 19-year-old frat boy and is certain to end up in the money shots that MTV needs. For example, see the recently released photos of him enjoying two women locked in a girl-on-girl kiss in front of him at a party at his estate in Sardinia. 

• Barack and Michelle Obama add the diversity element. In fact, this week they will actually break the color line at the G8 Summit, making it the first to actually feature a person of color sitting in one of the principal's seats. But they are also fun-loving, party people. Barack danced on the Ellen show and in Dreams from My Father he admitted to the kind of recreational drug use that one has to believe is an off-camera Real World specialty. Michelle would, of course, be the serious one in the house, the good girl who MTV clings to as a sign of the redeeming social content of the series.

• Carla Bruni knows how to party like a rock star from having partied with so many rock stars and because she is so telegenic she will be allowed to bring along her little guy, who will undoubtedly end up being the "Spencer" (to mix reality TV metaphors) of the show, mouthing off to everyone and likely getting into a fight with some of the bigger, more athletic members of Real World L'Aquila.

• One of the more dangerous of "jock" contingent will be former member of the Japanese Olympic team, Taro Aso, who competed in the shooting competition. Perfect for TV, Aso is even more dangerous when shooting off his mouth than when using a weapon. For instance, there was the time that he said sketched out his vision for a better Japan, suggesting that he wanted to help make it a country in which "rich Jews" would like to live.

• Another of the "jocks" with a professed love of weightlifting early in his life is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. More appealing however to producers at MTV will be his tastes in music which include Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. So, two birds with one stone...he's the muscle (he still swims a mile twice a day) and the requisite head-banger of the crowd. (Perhaps this will create fireworks others in the group who were firebrands in their youth, like former secretary for Agitprop of her chapter of the Free German Youth socialist youth group, Angela Merkel. Maybe after a few beers with vodka chasers they might break out in a Karaoke performance of "99 Luftballons" or, from the Deep Purple songbook, "Smoke on the Water.")

• Sadly, this being television, some thought may have to be given to kicking Canada and Great Britain out of the G8 due to the fact that Stephen Harper and Gordon Brown are so boring. At least, there is nothing in their youths that suggests they would ever indulge in the kind of hijinks that make for good reality television. Harper and Canada even managed to take the drama out of the global financial meltdown by actually properly managing their financial systems (something that can't be said for Brown who manages to achieve a paradoxical blend of boring and yet somehow terrifying at the same time.)

Given the fact that Berlusconi will be joined in Italy by members of the G20, the cast can be expanded to included a diverse enough group of lively characters to make this one version of Real World actually look a lot more like the real world than its many predecessors. South Africa's Jacob Zuma is, for example, a party all by himself with four wives, three other fiancés, perhaps as many as 18 children, and a list of run-ins with the law that would allow him to play the bad boy role. China's Hu Jintao was reportedly fond of singing and dancing in his teen years and therefore might add a little lift to those party nights out. And although Brazil's President Lula and Zuma may only have achieved the fourth and fifth grade in school, respectively, this actually makes them educationally over-qualified by Real World standards. 

Sadly for the Real World premise...and for the real world...not many of the visiting leaders are women so we will have to rely on host Berlusconi to add a few of his close personal friends to add a little sexual tension to the show.  But what with party credentials of the crowd gathering in L'Aquila and the help of Il Cavaliere it's clear this could make for fine viewing.  If we wanted to make it something more than that...and something more than the bland communiqué machine G8 meetings typically are...we could add a different reality show twist, à la say "Big Brother" or "Survivor," in which participants are voted out after each week. Except in this instance, what we could do is rely on the general odiousness of hanging out with pols around the clock to motivate the cast to want to leave the house, but then not let them out unless they actually get something done in their negotiations. Think how that system would change the nature of summits. Although my fear is that rather than producing more productive meetings of government leaders, the requirement that they get something done would actually lead to the end of summits altogether.

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Developing further my Airport Theory of Foreign Relations, it is impossible not to marvel at the creativity and industry of the Indians. Arriving after an eight-and-one half-hour-long flight from that shopping mall from Hell also known as Heathrow Terminal Five, we raced into Mumbai for a meeting. Naturally, we were seething with hostility after bad treatment and flying here on what seemed to be the original Boeing 777. In fact, parts seemed to be made from balsa wood suggesting they had been salvaged from earlier aircraft... a de Havilland Jenny for example. 

At any rate, this is the kind of subtle undermining of international relations that our painfully inefficient and unpleasant system of connecting the globe produces. We were ready to be ugly Americans, well-prepared for the job both by circumstances and genetics. 

So, what is rapidly expanding India -- today's papers announced that the country expects to grow in this global economic annus horibilis at the breathtaking rate of 7 percent -- to do with visitors like us? Answer: build in a cool-down period (no mean feat when the temperature is over 90 and everyone is nervously awaiting the arrival of the monsoon season). Where? The highway from the airport. A trip that should take 40 minutes took almost two hours. It was an exceptionally effective buffer. By the time we got to the hotel I could barely muster a sneer at the reception lady when she told me my room wasn't ready. Of course, I'll admit I was subdued somewhat by the sight of the gutted remnants of the terrorist gutted Oberoi which we passed on the way in. (And also by the security we had to pass through just to enter the lobby of this hotel.)

Admittedly, thanks to a tube strike, the city from which we came, London, is also offering massive traffic jams from the airport. The problem is they are also offering massive traffic jams to the airport. And they don't have anything like 7 percent growth to explain the rapidly growing number of cars on the motorways. Nor, of course, do they have anything like the slums that line the route into downtown Mumbai...but I'll admit it, despite the gut-wrenching deprivation in which the slum-dwellers live, it is hard to not to look around at cranes on the horizon or the ubiquity of cell phones (a phone line for life costs $2) or to think of the recent successful elections in this complex country of a billion and not think that India has the wind at its back at the moment. That doesn't minimize the social challenges but it clearly gives a feeling of vitality and hope.

What a relief to be seeing the stories of Manmohan Singh's new government on the front page of the paper and not the stories from the front pages in my last stop noting the electoral success of the BNP, the racist, troglodyte British National Party. America elects an African American. Britain sends haters to the European Parliament. (What a relief that it is a useless organization.) Worse, the papers also noted similar recent right wing successes across Europe. For example the triumph of anti-gypsy nationalists in Hungary. Great to see Europe stepping up to meet the great challenges of our times with these creatures who have crawled out of the shallow end of the political cesspool. 

That said, I can't say that I am that heartened by the news my blackberry keeps sending me from home, either. Can it really be that America is either surprised or interested that Adam Lambert is gay? (Really? Really?!) Can a Washington Post columnist actually be praising Obama for boldly taking a stance against Holocaust deniers (what next, a bold defense of Copernicus?), even as he seems to be allowing the country of those deniers to creep its way into the nuclear club? (If you don't see the irony here, write in and I will draw you a picture.)

is actually going to help either? Chrysler's best minds left after their last merger with Daimler Benz. Fiat doesn't have one single leading international brand. Is it really credible that if one of the world's most successful auto companies (Daimler Benz) couldn't save Chrysler that a combination of one of the world's most mediocre (Fiat) and a bunch of government guys who don't know anything about cars plus some union members who helped screw things up in the first place are going to do it? 

Here in India, taxi drivers talk with palpable pride at the advent of the Tata Nano, a tiny car that is a source of great national pride. Business executives cite the ease with which they meet much higher average gasoline mileage targets than posed in the United States. I mean, I get it, this is a very poor country with a wide range of desperate needs (over 40 percent of Indians don't have access to electricity yet). But you've got to ask which way the trends are pushing us...and you also have to ask why the United States has not made a more urgent priority of dramatically strengthening relations with this country. Such a relationship could not be more central to containing the threat in Pakistan, counter-balancing China, promoting democracy and managing a whole host of global threats from climate to proliferation. To be perfectly honest, I think a lot more real and lasting (rather than symbolic and likely to be fleeting) good would be likely to come from President Obama making a trip to the land of Gandhi than his recent trip to the land of Mubarak and Nasser.

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I am sitting in the lounge at Heathrow's Terminal Five, a monument to the idea that one of the few acceptable occupations for sadists that doesn't involve wearing black leather or working in TV programming is designing airline terminals. It is absurdly complex, gigantic, uninviting, cold and just the perfect atmosphere for turning weary travelers into snarling, drooling knots of hostility. 

In fact, I have a theory that one of the central problems in international relations is created by the brutal, dehumanizing nature of world travel. Well intentioned souls who want to build international understanding and good will get on airplanes and by the time they get to their destination, they want to kill, subjugate native cultures and exploit their natural resources. If people on airlines were actually nice and airports were not the meat-grinders of the soul they are, perhaps people would arrive in new countries with a positive outlook, a smile and less of an impulse to steal valuable intellectual property.

Of course, it all depends on the country into which you arrive. My 24 hours in the United Kingdom have exposed me to a kind of giddiness that one seldom sees outside the slumber parties of 11-year-old girls. There is only one thing that can cause the British to drop the reserved mortician act and reveal their inner Spice Girl (or for the more sophisticated among you, their inner Alan Ayckbourn). And that of course is the misfortune of prominent Brits, in this case, Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

It is ironic that Brown, who probably couldn't inspire a reflection out of his mirror, is triggering such hilarity.  But following what newspapers are heralding as the worst national election defeat for his party since King Arthur (ok, since the first World War), the prime minister has people marveling at the surpassing awfulness of his situation. In the wake of scandal, financial crisis, fiscal catastrophe and Manchester United's crushing defeat at the hands of Barcelona, Brown is hanging on only by what the Guardian calls "the brute business of internal politics, especially the crushing of internal dissent." Key cabinet members have resigned. Others are openly plotting against him. And yet, Rasputin-like, he survives the poisoning, the gun-shots, and the stabbings.

Of course, ultimately Rasputin got tossed in the river and drowned and sooner or later Brown will probably go the way of the dodo. And the Labour Party will probably go with him. Probably. But talking to a senior British business leader today, it was explained that if only Labour could forestall an election until next year and if the economy were to start to turn around, "they might just win because no one believes that the Conservatives, once in office, actually will have any idea what to do."

You see, the problem with the conservatives is that what they are right now is The Party That is Not Labour. And appropriately, their leader, David Cameron, is The Political Leader Who Is Not Gordon Brown. Literally, that is virtually Cameron's only distinction. He is, in the words of one member of the House of Lords with whom I spoke (Ooo La La. The House of Lords.  They would be so impressed back in New Jersey.), "a former PR guy, that says it all." I've actually met Cameron. I chaired a panel he was on in Davos once. And I have to say, he's such an empty suit he wouldn't feel out of place on a hanger at Brooks Brothers. 

So that is the choice here in the United Kingdom: the guys who screwed it up versus the guys who are going to screw it up...at a moment when the country and all Europe face problems of a scale unseen in decades. Which is why the giddiness at the horrendousness of the past few days for Brown seems an appropriate reaction. Much like the laughter you see coming from the shell-shocked in old British war movies. It's also why every one I spoke to here, regardless of political persuasion got all doe-eyed and misty whenever Barack Obama's name came up. They're not sure he will be a big success either. But at least he might be. At least he looks like a leader. At least he sounds like one. 

Meanwhile Britain is as rudderless as it has been at any time since the 1970s when they were teaching the world a thing or two about collapsing empires and bungled bail-outs of auto companies. (Which reminds me.  Speaking of botched leadership, Steve Rattner, please go read about British Leyland.) 

And this damn airport is not helping to dispel the impression of a nation in disarray. So I'm leaving. And going someplace that is prospering: Mumbai.

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