Dan: Sorry I’m late to follow up on this, but I think you answered your own question:
But on the whole, by investing time and personal capital in getting to know foreign heads of state, Bush does seem to have helped ease, around the margins, some of the strains created by a stormy era in American foreign policy.
The margins count. Working them doesn’t take the place of the hard work of diplomacy — something for which President Bush gets too little credit — but it surely does better than just counting on everyone to love you to death.
How bad a place is the Administration inhabiting when Der Spiegel calls you a naif?
TNL