Role Reversal

The highlight of the week of the General Assembly for us has been the role reversal that Benny Avni, in his dispatch on page 7, writes about from Turtle Bay. He is referring to the address to the General Assembly by President Sarkozy, in which the new leader of the Fifth Republic struck a tone that was, let us say (we wouldn't want to use the word belligerent), moderately hawkish. It was only a few months ago (or was it years?) that the left was warning how we were alienating the peaceable French and the other Europeans. But this week Monsieur Sarkozy's remarks were in sharp contradistinction to the speech of President Bush, which was full of talk about soft-power and human rights. We were tempted to send some smelling salts over to the editorial sanctum of the New York Times in case anyone there came down with vertigo.

As it happens, the day before Mr. Sarkozy gave his address we joined our contributing editor Alex Storozynski for his interview with President Kaczynski of Poland. We had a wonderful palaver in a side room at the Waldorf. We asked the president, who has a low-key and friendly manner, about the criticism the Bush administration had been getting for supposedly ruining relations with the French and the Germans. He had a quiet chuckle at the question. "The United States," he said, speaking through a translator, "is in a better position now than before the outset of the Iraq war." We took him to mean a better position not only in respect of safety but also politically in terms of relations with the European countries. Clearly the animosity toward America and the Bush administration has been drained from the governments of both France and Germany.

Another factor influencing Europe's change in attitude toward America, Mr. Kaczynski said, is President Putin, who is increasingly being seen as a real bully, using the weapon of oil, in respect of the European countries. He recalled the way, a year and a half ago, Russia turned off the oil supply to Ukraine to send a warning to Kiev. One can always expect to hear about the Russians from a Polish leader, but that doesn't make their concerns any less true. As Mr. Bush deals with Mr. Putin and his Kremlin camarilla over the question of the anti-missile system, he'll find a Polish president very much in the American corner. "We want the missile shield," Mr. Kaczynski told us. And for good measure he reminded us that Poland is in both Iraq and Afghanistan and is willing to work together in other ways.

This is something for the political strategists to be thinking about with America but a year away from a presidential election. What is the Democrats's plan in respect of foreign affairs? Their fundamental critique of the Republicans' ability to manage the Atlantic relationship is being proven wrong. Relations are not only warm but trending in the right direction. The Democrats are at a tipping point on protectionism, even as the United Automobile Workers start walking off the job. The Republicans will be, if they can find someone to maintain Mr. Bush's strategy on immigration, the party of open-ness. And they will have shown that standing one's ground on principle, even at the time of a war that is unpopular among the elites, can bring people around in the long run.