Could the next President be even scarier?

[zonmoy]

http://www.macleans.ca/world/usa/article.jsp?content=200701031_16428_16428&page=1

As part of her job at an influential national security think tank, Julianne Smith brings politicians and senior policy-makers from all over Europe to Washington for candid closed-door meetings with the policy advisers to the candidates vying to replace President George W. Bush. The Europeans usually arrive eager to discuss the coming era that some are dubbing "AB" — "After Bush." That is the highly anticipated period beginning on Jan. 20, 2009, in which a newly sworn-in American president, chastened by the troubles in Iraq and by the scorn of allies who say the Bush White House flouted international law, will turn his or her back on the militaristic and unilateralist ways of the preceding seven years, contritely embrace multilateral institutions and international treaties, bring home U.S. troops, and perhaps even rename the "war on terror" as something other than a "war."
But by the time the meetings end — be they with advisers to Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, or Republicans such as Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney — the visitors usually have the same reaction, says Smith, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The response is usually a little bit of shock and awe and disappointment. They say, 'What do you mean? We thought this would be a new era!' "
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Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans are sick of the Iraq war, while many worry that through its counter-terrorism policies, the U.S. has squandered the goodwill it once enjoyed abroad. When the current presidential season began in earnest a year ago, it was widely expected that the aspirants to the White House would be campaigning against the swaggering foreign policy associated with Bush. But precisely the opposite has happened. To the great surprise of the Europeans, and to many Americans, the leading presidential candidates are talking just as tough as the current occupant of the White House — and some even tougher