The International Herald Tribune (USA): "Europe looks at Putin with prudence and respect, and at Bush with indifference"
If it came down to a few facts, Putin has created an aggressive, hectoring Russia, a seemingly rich country without justice or democratic political life, whose gas and oil resources come close to giving it a chokehold on Europe's energy supply.
Putin's success is in perpetuating his system and himself.
Bush, in the same nutshell, is leaving America with its influence and good will diminished. He has been unable to win a war in Iraq whose best justification, Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib aside, would have been victory. The United States' allies wait for its voters to turn the page.
Europe still hangs on Putin's words regardless of how protocol labels his function - these days, prime minister.
For an American president on tour for a week in five European countries, Bush is a near afterthought for Europe's leaders, who welcome him personally as a congenial and decent man.
How ironic: A Europe always repeating that it wants an America, 3,000 miles distant, that would take less of a grip on its affairs is getting exactly that.
And at the same time, after having made Bush its target of choice for two terms, European public opinion says next to nothing about Putin's Russia looming over the continent - threatening its neighbors as missile targets, warning don't expand NATO or don't give Kosovo its independence, and saying no to a charter that would bind fairness, competition, and reliability into Gazprom's domination of European energy needs.
Normally, in America's view of reality, regardless of Europe's notions about changes in the Yankee wind, its president has the responsibility to exercise worldwide leadership. Except that when Bush is involved, a very strong argument says that he has wielded none when it came to Russia.
To this day, Bush remains publicly unwilling to recant his decoding of a glint of soulfulness deep in Putin's eyes.
Which returns things to the old paradigm of the Putin-Bush relationship. It means that on Iran, energy supply, and painting America as the world's culprit - over the weekend Dmitri Medvedev, seemingly Putin's echo, called U.S. "economic egotism" the main cause of the global financial crisis - Russia does pretty much as it pleases and the United States pretty much keeps its mouth shut about it.
That is not exactly an American success story.
And now, concordant French voices say that Putin's conversation with Nicolas Sarkozy at the end of May demonstrated his primacy, and the continuation of his policies.
"It put the dots on the i's of the analysis that Medvedev is a kind of stand-in," said an adviser listened to by Sarkozy on issues relating to Russia. According to a second consultant, Putin "talked as the boss."
Le Monde, which interviewed Putin while he was in Paris, added a stamp of additional authority. It wrote the visit confirmed that "Mr. Putin remains the real chief of the Kremlin." He defines policy, it said, leaving Medvedev with a limited margin for maneuver.
Add that up: considering French and German reticence, and Bush's unbending misjudgment of Putin, it means nobody is around to face up to Russia on energy or its efforts to stop countries of the old Soviet bloc from becoming part of the West. It also signifies limited will among the allies to bypass Russia's years of stalling on Iran's behalf in the UN Security Council.
In general, that will certainly hasn't emanated from George Bush.
He took a pass on leadership at the St. Petersburg G-8 summit meeting in 2006, deciding not to confront Putin in favor of rules that would help brake the European dependency on Russian energy that NATO defines as one of the alliance's big strategic problems.
Two years later, there is nothing to suggest that in coming negotiations on a new "strategic partnership" with Russia the European Union will insist on an overall energy deal to equally protects all its members.
Bundling its forces into a single, strong whole - that's what European unity is supposed to be about. But Bush, perhaps concerned about calling out Germany or Italy on their preferential deals with Moscow, never supported that case or made his own for a global client/supplier energy charter.
One of the rationalizations given two years ago for this was that Bush sought not to antagonize Russia at a juncture when Putin might help on Iran.
As it turned out, Putin, in his Le Monde interview, continued to insist Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons. "Not much separates us on Iran," he said of the United States. Here is a remarkably encouraging situation for Putin, one where he seems to know Bush won't fire back even at the patently preposterous.
This spring, when the United States sought to give Ukraine and Georgia new status as candidate members for entry into NATO, the initiative collapsed.
It was a new gauge of American ineffectiveness. Bush had allowed an unchallenged Russia to emerge to the point that he stood down when France and Germany warned of provoking Moscow.
Now, Russia seems fixed on the quasi-annexation of two regions that have separated from Georgia, and intimidating Ukraine.
It is in this Russia that Putin flourishes, his place and prestige intact. Bush, who never called him out for all to see, is now in long-goodbye mode, the problem of his friend's resurgent country disturbingly ignored.
Looking at Putin with prudence and respect, and Bush now with indifference more than rage, Europe listens to one and just nods politely at the other.
In the end, Bush's failure to confront Russia, partially out of a fear of losing his Iraq-disillusioned allies, seems to sustain European hopes for detecting a liberal leader in Putin's successor, regardless of the evidence.
Bush and Medvedev, he of the better shirts and ties than Putin's more standard KGB-issue, are to meet in a month at a G-8 summit meeting in Japan.
Medvedev will speak, for now, with Putin's voice, and Bush, by comparison, in his own whisper.
