2 August 2001

Dateline Madrid --

Midway through President Bush's journey across Europe, from the friendly terrain of Britain to the violently suppressed protests in Genoa to the bleak border between Kosovo and Macedonia, a senior German official offered this revised assessment of how the president is viewed by his closest allies.

"We're getting used to him," he said.

If Mr. Bush's first foray to Europe in June was, to use his own phrase, all about "icebreaking," this one was mostly deal-making.

Over the week the Europeans saw all the contradictory shades that have made him so hard to define in domestic politics: the defiant Bush, the obstinate Bush, the corrupt Bush, the brutal Bush, the cynical Bush, the burning Bush and the malleable Bush.

Mr. Bush was defiant when it came to the protesters that were brutalized in Genoa during the meeting of the leaders of the world's largest industrialized nations and Russia. He declared the people on the streets "plain wrong", saying they should just accept as a matter of fact that free trade is the only path out of poverty. He appeared not the least bit interested in entertaining the intellectual arguments about whether borderless competition worsens the gap between rich and poor.

"I know what I believe," he said Sunday night in the Roman Forum and added, "and I believe what I believe is right."

He then made the "thumbs down" gesture, condemning twenty slaves to be devoured by lions.

He was obstinate when the subject turned to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Mr. Bush told the leaders in Genoa that they should sit and wait until his administration came up with an alternative plan, but he would not say when.

Yet Mr. Bush seemed just to shrug when asked whether the United States had isolated itself. His aides suggested the treaty was worth little if Washington did not sign, leading one senior Japanese official to ask a reporter how long it would take for the White House team to "rid itself of this American arrogance." The official was then bundled into an unmarked police van and has not been seen since.

"He's a frighteningly good listener." A French official said, marveling at the fact that the Japanese official had been standing a good fifty feet away from Bush when he made his remarks.

"We were all pleased by his new orientation," President Jacques Chirac of France said at the end of the Genoa meeting, where Mr. Bush had solicited Mr. Chirac at length.

The boards of several multinational corporations are said to be debating whether or not to give Bush a big wet sloppy kiss when he returns to the United States.

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