Nick Kristof "charmed" by Dubya; thinks rest of world will be too

Nick Kristof gives a history lesson in today's NYT.:

We might recall what happened to ancient Athens, perhaps the greatest flowering of civilization. In just three generations, one small city - by today's standards, anyway - nurtured democracy, became a superpower and produced some of the greatest artists, writers, philosophers and historians the world has ever known.

Yet Athens became too full of itself. It forgot to apply its humanity beyond its own borders, it bullied its neighbors, and it scoffed at the rising anti-Athenianism. To outsiders, it came to epitomize not democracy, but arrogance. The great humanists of the ancient world could be bafflingly inhumane abroad, as at Melos, the My Lai of its day.

Athens's overweening military intervention abroad antagonized and alarmed its neighbors, eventually leading to its defeat in the Peloponnesian War. It's not so much that Athens was defeated - it betrayed its own wonderful values, alienated its neighbors and destroyed itself.

Kristof is still optimistic, he is at pains to point out -- "Fortunately, I think Mr. Bush is beginning to get it." Kristof's evidence: Bush plans to visit Europe, Colin Powell said something (why is anything Colin Powell says relevant?), and Bush did not echo wingnut calls for Kofi Annan's head this week. Oh, and also, Kristof has "seen firsthand how Mr. Bush can turn on the charm when he needs to."

Well then. We are, I'm sure, well on our way to repairing our image, because hey, if the guy can charm American journalists, he can charm anyone, right? Right.