'Bush a better choice for Europe'

LONDON: On the eve of America''s most cliff-hanger presidential election in a generation, the countries once dismissed as ''Old Europe'' by President Bush''s most loyal henchman Donald Rumsfeld, are conducting a point-by-point analysis of Dubya and his challenger John Kerry.
The sudden, surprising consensus across France and Germany, the very motor of the European unification project, is that despite loathing Dubya and liking Kerry, a Bush win might actually save their troops from being dragooned into Iraq''s killing fields.
And that Bush might be better for the European economy.
Even as Liberátion welcomed the Switzerland-schooled, French-speaking, Brittany-holidaying Democrat Kerry as "the kind of American we like", Germany''s foremost heavyweight broadsheet, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), offered up a sober warning by the US Ambassador in Germany, Daniel Coats.Coats, said the paper, cautioned Germans about "exaggerated expectations" of a Kerry presidency.
A Kerry win might cause even more "foreign policy problems", FAZ dolefully reported Coats as saying.
On Monday, France''s Le Monde mused that this unusually close-fought election was likely to break past records by reversing "the usual voter apathy of Americans, resulting in a turnout expected to exceed European levels".
Meanwhile, the US ambassador''s warning appeared to chime with alarm bells ringing right the way across German popular opinion, with the Hamburg-based Bild, Germany''s biggest-selling national paper, reporting in its inimitable colourful style that a future President Kerry would probably mean German troops were destined for Iraq.
Bild, which is written in a tabloid style and adopts a right-of-centre position, carried expert analysis by German movers and shakers titled "Bush vs Kerry! Who is better for us?"
In a surprising, last minute conclusion, its experts appeared to suggest Germany might do better out of a second-term Bush presidency.
The paper quoted one of its leading industrialists to remind Germans of Kerry''s desire to "fetch jobs back from foreign countries and reduce the imported goods to America. That can cost very many jobs with us."
Bild also quoted army general Klaus Naumann to say a Kerry win would make it "more difficult for the Federal Government (of Germany) to reject a possible troop requirement for Iraq".
The General said Kerry, who is famously seen to be more multi-lateralist and opposed to America going it alone, "will turn to the (NATO) allies and their participation will be required."
Meanwhile, Le Figaro of France, where religion is firmly kept out of the rational business of state, reports contemptuously on how "(American) evangelists are mobilising themselves for George W Bush, (with) radios, televisions, universities, Internet sites, best-sellers (trying) to achieve their objective: to convert the United States to the Christian faith".
It offers a list of "media evangelists" steadily converting America to ''the one true word'', including the Christian Broadcast Network and Rupert Murdoch''s Family Channel.
The publication says, with more passion than truth, that even Hollywood is not immune from the fever, betraying its new "messianic vision" in the film ''The Passion of Christ''. However, that film was funded and produced by Mel Gibson.
It adds that America faces its "moment of truth tomorrow (Tuesday) the re-election or not of George W. Bush".
Unsurprisingly, France''s only major daily to act as the organ of a political party, the 100-year-old respected Communist paper L''Humanite, diagnoses America to be in the grip of a strange kind of election fever: "God, Fatherland and Fear, each one of them forming a large market".
L''Humanite, which still bears its original socialist slogan "In an ideal world, L''Humanite would not exist", says Bush represents the enormous commercial reach of evangelical churches and Methodists, all of whom are controlled by America''s billionaires and all of whom represent the "same religious fanaticism".
Meanwhile, the strongly pro-European Rennes-based Ouest-France, which sells more copies than any other French daily, says the Osama bin Laden video could play either way in the crucial countdown to the polls.
The paper says that the "apparition of Bin Laden does nothing but reinforce the choice of 95 per cent of the decided voters. For the five per cent remaining, many might lean towards Kerry and a change of direction, even as a reflex of fear could persuade them to maintain George Bush".