THE WIND BENEATH THE EMU'S WINGS

Old Europe (Ian Campbell, 8/28/2003, UPI)

"Four legs good, two legs bad" becomes the mantra of the pigs in George Orwell's "Animal Farm." "U.S. good, Europe bad" might be the mantra of many an American businessman.

For though the antiquities of Rome, the pubs of Dublin and the boulevards of Paris enchant Americans, old Europe tends not to charm economically or politically in the United States.

The European economy is seen as hugely inferior to the American one: less competitive, more expensive, less flexible, more statist. America leads; Europe does not follow: it is pulled along -- by the higher growth of the United States.

Politically, meanwhile, Europe is seen as the home of uncommitted and the plain wrong. The "old Europe" of France and Germany, to use U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's disparaging term, opposed attacking Saddam Hussein's Iraq while Britain stepped forward. Europe laughed at Reagan and his "tear down this wall" message to Mikail Gorbachev. Look what happened.

And Reagan's supply-side economics? Twenty years on it is the economics rather than the laughter that has lasted.

If ever there was a moment when the world needed Europe to be a serious economic factor it was immediately after 9-11, when an American economy that had already slowed received a horrific shock. Instead, Europe proved itself useless. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2003 8:30 PM