Bush shows his affection for German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Sort of reminds me of Boris Yeltsin’s last days as Russia’s premier – public intoxication, directing the band at an outdoor plaza, etc.

Foreign leaders have discovered what Condi knows: the way to influence President Bush is to establish a ‘personal’ relationship.

A perfect example was Koizumi’s visit. My God they went to Graceland! Is there so little of substance to our relationship with the Japanese that a summit is spent discussing pop stars?

On a slightly different note, I just read George Will’s column in the WP.

First he goes after the President and his disasterous policies in the Middle East. But then he shifts his attention to the editors of the Weekly Standard which are the real focus of the column. Will even ends with a baseball metaphor, which is his way of showing that he actually cares about what he is saying.

Let’s have a fundraiser to buy out his contract. Given Bush’s penchant for vacations, early retirement would probably be an easy sell. I seriously wonder whether we can survive another 2 years of his arrogant incompetence.

HEY!

Just yesterday you said the MSM missed the real story about Bush swearing, but now you treat this as some kind of frat-boy joke? My guess is that you and everyone commenting on this blog is male.

Watch the clip. Watch Merkel. She is NOT smiling. She is reacting defensively to the fact that a man is doing something to her that she did not give him permission to do, ask him to do, or want him to do.

If you show that clip to any woman other than some hard-right apologist like Matalin you’re going to get a negative reaction. Which means you and the other blogs should stop laughing about what a jerk Bush is and try to get this clip moved onto today’s front page at CNN.

PUSH THIS STORY: GEORGE BUSH IS A SEXIST BASTARD!

PUSH THIS STORY: GEORGE BUSH HAS NO PERSONAL BOUNDARIES!

PUSH THIS STORY: BUSH WOULD HAVE SLAPPED HER ON THE ASS IF SHE’D BEEN STANDING UP!

Come on, Steve – don’t drop the ball.

(If you don’t believe me about all this, show the clip to five women you know and watch their reactions. You’ll see fire in their eyes.)

Oy,

Althought I do believe that mostof the posters here are male let’s not generalize that we miss the point about “bad touch”. I think that was teh point about the post to begin with. This is in no was appropriate.

I agree with Oy.

I’m inclined to agree with Oy here. She’s not smiling and she’s clearly uncomfortable.He’s probably “friendly” with female White House staffers as well. We’ve learned a lot about our president over the last couple of days. He never learned not to talk with his mouth full. He never learned to keep his hands to himself, and he doesn’t know how to act in a professional situation. Every situation is a backyard barbecue/kegger to him.

I think this also goes along with his “alpha male” routine he pulls regularly. Touching bald men on their heads, inappropriate embraces and the nicknames, all to establish who’s in charge as if we had forgotten. I had a boss like Bush, and after every handsy encounter I walked away thinking what a inappropriate, insincere jackass he was.

Oy: My guess is that you and everyone commenting on this blog is male.

nope, not me; dunno about the others, apart from CB.

Hmmmm… maybe Bush is taking some clues from Clinton, and figures he could get a boost in the polls if only he had a sex scandal…

Wow…so here’s an issue that Bush could be hurt with, but half the replies to my post are concerned about my off-hand guess that the bloggers here are mostly male. What does that say about our collective ability to keep our eyes on the objective?

Don’t answer that!

My point was, this is not something that should be minimized. If you’re a woman, how does the clip make you feel? If you’re a man and it doesn’t seem all that bad, as women you know how it makes them feel.

If women feel that Bush is violating the personal space of a woman then that damages him. Pointing out that his actions undermine her standing as a head of state is also a good idea, but at root it’s his personal violation of her space – and how easily he did it – that’s at issue.

Why did he pick the one woman in the room to massage? Why?

Has there been anything in the German press about the backrub?

Bush’s behavior the last few days takes me back to those articles from early in his first term about his being a “dry drunk.”

He’s succeeded in St. Petersburg in acting not only like a frat boy, but a drunk one — and without being drunk.

I assume, though, that none of this behavior — the sexist behavior, the potty mouth, the slovenly eating, the pig jokes — is being acknowledged, or even noticed, by anyone in his “base.” IOKIYAR.

Shruby just doesn’t give a damn what anybody, anywhere in the world thinks about him. He’s above it all. He’ll do what he pleases and he doesn’t care what effect it has on anybody. He’s the uber Brat. A Universe class jerk. I think the world is pretty astounded that such an obnoxious twit can achieve such power. Whether he’s going over the edge mentally or just flipping off the rabble all around him, the time leading up to his departure from the world scene will become more and more ridiculous. And dangerous.

Check out Rawstory’s (admittedly biased) version of events.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Bush_massages_German_Chancellor_Merkel_at_0718.html

Now, imagine instead that the U.S. has a female president, and when the Chinese Premier walks into a meeting with her he gives her a quick neck massage. How would that make you feel as a U.S. citizen?

Chances are we’re not winning many friends in Germany – or Europe – with this latest diplomatic initiative.

As a woman, I’d like to second Oy’s emotion. It made my skin crawl when I saw that scene and Chancellor Merkel’s expression (definitely not a smile!). What it emphasizes to me about Bush is that he believes himself to be the superior of everyone. The way he rudely bullied the reporter with visual impairment into removing his sunglasses is another example. I kept wondering–what kind of person does that? He is pathologically self-centered. His attitudes about women are appalling, but the rest is frightening. I can’t believe how often he keeps people dismissing it as “humor.” (And I don’t mean here–I know most of us laugh to keep from crying.)

I’m not sure this or any of his other boorish behavior is off-putting to his base, even the women. A female Bush supporting relative of mine said just yesterday that “at least with Bush there’s never a dull moment.”

Great to know that’s what it’s come to but disturbing to think they’re willing to set the bar so low just because of the R after his name.

Bush reeks of the ick feeling the way teenage boys reek of Axe.

“I wonder how many people in Germany and the World think all US males are like GWB. Embarrasing.” – ScottW

I had the opportunity to live in Germany for a few summers, and I found the people there to be very similar to Americans. So, with that being said, there are some Germans that would generalize this behavior as “American,” just as there are Americans that believe all Muslims are extremists. The educated population of Germany will realize that this was an inappropriate act by an ignorant leader, and not representative of Americans as a whole.

Frankly, I think this is just one more piece of evidence that Bush is starting to come unhinged from the stress of the job. For most of his presidency his handlers kept him in a bubble which protected him from seeing the ugly consequences of his actions. Further, I suspect that he was rather thick skinned anyway when it came to the effect of his actions on others, although rather thin skinned when it came to personal criticism . However, the idea that the world may implode on his watch is hard to hide from him and difficult to ignore for even the most thick skinned individual. Because lead a stress free life until 2001, he is ill equipped to handle such stress and we are seeing the beginnings of a breakdown. This is not a comforting thought.

I also agree with Oy. There was no “smile” in that video. He comes up behind the woman, grabs her shoulders and she flings her arms up to get rid of him. It was an entirely inappropriate gesture and to report that he “reached out and, placing both hands on the collar of her gold jacket, gave her a short massage just below the neck” seems incredibly disingenuous. As soon as he touches her, her arms start going up to get him away and what follows is not a smile.

It certainly wouldn’t be permitted in my workplace.

I think the appropriate word to use here is “violation.”

Look at the photos and the Chancellor’s expressions in them, and you can see that Bush violated the Chancellor, both in terms of personal space and physical touching, and also in terms of the respect she’s due as a fellow national leader.

But Bush is used to “violating” people on many levels. On a political level he clearly violated the American people with his NSA “anti-terror” spy program. Attorney General Gonzales just fessed up a few minutes ago that “the President” stonewalled the DoJ investigation into the NSA program.

There are many correct observations in the comments above. When I first saw the photo montage of Bush’s assault on Merkel (Josh also has posted at TPM), my reaction was very personal. Angela Merkel, elected leader of a powerful western democracy, reduced to the same level as many a woman in the “work place.” The photo of her with her arms raised is a position I can well recognize. More than once in my career I have had to inform the men I worked for that such “massages” were not welcome. Merkel’s body language brings back that feeling of being violated, wanting it to cease immediately, all the while knowing that protest can be somewhat awkward or even dangerous. My first boss was an inveterate back rubber. Some of the women in the office loved it. I did not. I particularly did not like it when he studiously did it in front of outside professionals with whom I needed to build professional credibility. After attempts to get him to stop with humor, I finally confronted him and told him that his behavior gave me the “willies.” He then followed me down the hallway saying that “I bet you don’t like men,” and he told others not to get too close to me as I didn’t like men. It was hugely humiliating and I hated his guts for it (this was well before sexual harrassment had a name and remedy in the workplace). I look at Merkel and am quite certain Bush’s behavior is unwelcome and completely inappropriate. I have long held that Bush keeps up his frat-boy behavior in order (as has been said above) to remind everyone that he is at the top of the the pecking order. I also agree that it is symptomatic that he is continuing to crack from the pressure of being consistently out of his depth. This trip reveals that letting “Bush be Bush” is a perilous strategy, and we have to endure two more years of it. Finally, I think this is continued evidence of an observation made here and at other blogs I read: Bush loves the trappings of the office of POTUS; it’s the damn work and details he just cannot pretend to like.

It’s all of a piece with using someone’s sweater to clean his glasses.

–Rick Taylor

I guess if he did it to man, Dick Cheney would call him a faggot.

Back in the 1960s a Canadian Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, gave a speech in the United States where he made some criticism of the Vietnam War. Upon seeing your president at some occasion not too long after, LBJ grabbed Pearson by the ears and said: “Don’t piss in my backyard!” (As a Canadian, even I think Pearson had that one coming.)

Bush is maybe a little too informal for his own good, although I do understand he insists that all visitors to the Oval Office wear formal attire, unlike the Clinton administration. As for this “Texas one second massage” with Merkel, it was a friendly jesture. What else could it have been? Merkel was probably a bit surprised but hardly demeaned, threatened, or harassed.

LBJ grabbing Pearson by the ears was a much bigger deal than this bit of nothing. Bush and Merkel are allies on many issues, both being conservative, and he has no interest in jeopardising a good relationship with her (especially considering how he got on with Schroeder by comparison).

This issue’s been beat to death, but there are a couple of pointss I’d like to bring up.
1. The neck rub was entirely inappropriate. It was demeaning to Merkel and made Bush look like a domineering buffoon. If she was standing, he would have swatted her rear and called her toots.
2. Even if the contact was welcome, it was not professional. If this was a couple (say, Bill and Hillary), the neck massage would still be inappropriate in this kind of a setting. These are world leaders at the G8 summit. They need to do the job they came to do and act diplomatic and professional. A man giving a massage to woman is notthinking of the tasks at hand.
3. What does Laura think of George’s wandering hands? If your husband was rubbing another woman’s neck, wouldn’t you be angry?

Yes, indeed I saw the clip on TV. Was busy with something else, then when I glanced at the TV, I had to stop and watch. Huh? What the heck! Mind you, I do avoid watching Bush whenever he comes on the screen … just can’t waste my time hearing him deliver nonsense while looking vacuous every time. But there on the screen that one moment, there it was for me to catch with a “huh” on my face… the POTUS slumped on his chair, popping in his mouth and chewing something very casually, and with his mouth still full … talking to PM Blair who had a more statesmanlike look beside him. And then I realized it was at the G8 summit. That was Bush in a formal conference setting??? (Of course later I would also accidentally catch the neck massage.) Then I was reminded of the same accidental catch on TV years ago, of a GPBush son (I guess it was Dubya) picking his nose (nope, not scratching or touching, but PICKING) while on the stands watching a sports game. All that money cannot buy basic manners? Forget that they managed to make him president … that’s a whole issue I cannot even begin to… oh no, now I’m squirming.