The Bush honeymoon isn't over yet
By Tom Plate
A professor in communication studies and policy studies at UCLA and a columnist for The Honolulu Advertiser and The South China Morning Post.
The other day, Chinese President Jiang Zemin in effect told The Washington Post he wasn't too worried about the future direction of President George W. Bush's China policy because Jiang was sure that if the new American president got too far out of line, his father — who just happens to be a former American president — would talk some sense into him.
Great going, Jiang. Let's just hope George W. doesn't now look to do something foolish about China just to show Dad he's all grown up. As one internationally respected Southeast Asian political figure, utterly flabbergasted by the remark, told me last week, ''What possibly could have prompted Jiang to say something like that?''
A profound mystery it is, but the gaffe did serve to dramatize the point that imprudence is not the exclusive province of the young — and experience is no guarantor of maturity.
The experienced Jiang has absolutely no excuse: He has been China's No. 1 since 1993. And he'll stay on top for the time being, in part because China's president has something else that Bush doesn't have: news media that confer all kinds of image-protecting immunities on No. 1.
Not so in America. Here, a U.S. president's honeymoon lasts 100 days, if he's lucky. That is basically all the time that political custom, pundits and politicians allow for a new administration to hatch.
But these days, with the speed of information technology and the glandular hyperactivity of the rush-to-judgment news media, the honeymoon period is shorter than ever. However, excessive premature criticism can have the unintended effect of undermining a presidency that hasn't had the chance fully to get off the ground.
Consider the new president's plight. He has been No. 1 for all of 70 days or so. Had he said something even as remotely dumb as Jiang did, the U.S. media would have been all over him.
As it is, we've been all over him from Day One. We howled when he pulled the rug out from under South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's ''sunshine policy'' of engagement with the North. We complained about Bush's seeming lack of awareness of the impending implosion of Indonesia.
And we scoffed at the Bush administration's foolish decision to go through the motions of the annual pointless China-bashing at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. There, the United States again condemned China over its human-rights record, and Beijing again repulsed the U.S. attack.
But why go on and on? Why rush to judgment about our new president? Sure, the early Bush foreign-policy performance card is spotty. But so is every new president's. Let's be fair: Recall the astonishing early gaffes of the Clinton administration's first year. Recall, too, Clinton's knee-jerk, campaign-speech-like human-rights lectures about China that first year or so. Bush and Co. have yet to do anything as clumsy as that with China.
Nor has the administration declared war or broken the general peace. There's hardly been a Bay of Pigs-type debacle. Moreover, all the bad decisions, questionable directions and worrisome mannerisms of the first 100 days are reversible. It has more than enough time to right all courses.
So do others: The North Koreans have ample opportunity as well to wake up and accept, whether they like it or not, that Bush, not Clinton, is the new president. China relations are far from poisoned — especially if Bush is careful to limit our arms sales to Taiwan and China is careful not to go ballistic if he unwisely doesn't.
Sure, America's Indonesian policy is virtually nonexistent, but it would improve overnight with the simple expedient of naming a special presidential envoy to Jakarta (such as outgoing China ambassador Joe Prueher, the former Pacific commander). And surely everyone likes Bush's appointment of sunny Howard Baker, a former Senate leader, to Tokyo as the new American ambassador. Nice one, Mr. President.
Not only could the news media give Bush a break, so could this Republican Congress. It could pitch in by expeditiously confirming key Bush nominees, such as James Kelly as the top State Department official for Asia. It's ridiculous for Bush and Colin Powell, his wise secretary of state, to have to make do with holdover appointments.
This new American administration is still a work in progress. Let's keep our powder dry and our minds open. Less than 100 days does not a presidency make.
