Another Must-Read

Mark Steyn takes on Canadian and European anti-American snobbery: They'll have to think again about the Quiet American

In fairness to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, when he dubbed the US the Great Satan he at least understood that America is a tempter, a seducer: his slur attempts to explain its appeal. Calling America the Great Moron, by contrast, is just feeble. I happen to like moral clarity myself, but I can appreciate that for some tastes Bush's habit of dividing the world into "good" and "evil" and using these terms non-ironically might seem a little simplistic. But it's nowhere near as simplistic as dividing the world into "I'm right" and "you're stupid".

For Republicans, this is an old song. "President Reagan's library burned down. Both books," drawled Gore Vidal from his exile in Italy. "The tragedy was he had not finished colouring the books." This is the guy who won the Cold War. In the 1950s, Eisenhower was a smiling dummy who cared most about his golf. This is the fellow who won the Second World War. But long after everything else has crumbled away the intellectual arrogance of the anti-Americans is indestructible. "A man like George W Bush is simply not possible in our politics," I was told by an elegant, cultured Parisian this spring. "For a creature of such crude, simplistic and extreme views to be one of the two principal candidates in a presidential election would be inconceivable here. Inconceivable!" Two weeks later, Jean Marie Le Pen made it into the final round of the French election.

All this Bush-is-a-dummy garbage is beyond tiresome. However, I say let the Bush-is-a-dummy crowd continue to underestimate Bush. Because when they underestimate Bush (and America in general), they lose.