Ups and Downs for the Week of July 4

This is a partial transcript from "The Beltway Boys", July 9, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

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MORT KONDRACKE, CO-HOST: Let’s take a look at this week’s ups and downs.

DOWN: French President Jacques Chirac (search). The French put the blame squarely on his shoulders for losing their 2012 Olympic bid (search) after this impolitic remark, "One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad. After Finland, it is the country with the worst food."

Now, he was referring to the British of course, who were his, the adversaries and one that got the Olympics.

FRED BARNES, CO-HOST: Right.

KONDRACKE: Chirac, I think, has just totally lost his political touch. And, and he obviously had it at one time. I mean, he seems not to counted votes and realized that the Finns had two crucial votes as to who was going to get the Olympics.

BARNES: Yes.

KONDRACKE: I mean, what he obviously should have said is, reindeer meat, it is my favorite dish.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: Mort, not only are you anti-French, but here you’re mocking the Finns.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: I’ve been to Finland (search). I don’t remember having any reindeer meat. I love Finland. But Chirac is clearly a politician in decline. I mean, the E.U., European Union (search) constitution, which he was in favor of, it went down the tubes in France and in other countries. Unemployment rate that was two, is 10.2 percent, without any expectation of getting any better any time soon. The economy is stagnant and so on, which actually, this is a bad time for Chirac.

But that, the economy there touches on our next subject, and that is, DOWN: the Kyoto treaty (search).

Despite the unanimity at the G8 summit over the War on Terror (search) and aid to Africa, President Bush didn’t give an inch in his opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. Here’s Bush Thursday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: The former construct just didn’t work for us. And I fully recognize that by making that point, it was not a popular position in parts of the world. Now’s the time to get beyond the Kyoto period and develop a strategy forward that is inclusive, not only of the United States, but of the developing nations, and, of course, nations like Great Britain.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARNES: That’s a funny way to get around the provisions of the treaty. What he calls the formal construct, something like that.

Anyway, well, Bush did point to one of what I think are the two fatal flaws in the Kyoto treaty in this climate change treaty, and the first being that China and India, the developing nations, which really pump out a lot of these gases, greenhouse gases, are not included in the treaty. I mean, that’s fatal flaw number one.

And the other flaw, of course, is, it’s easier for countries with no economic growth, like France, to comply with the treaty. But if you’re a country that’s growing, that has economic growth, that’s building jobs and so on, like India and China, for instance, and the United States, it’s very difficult. It really, it’s hard to comply, and obviously in the U.S., it would create a recession. So, in other words, look, the Kyoto folks who put that treaty together have to come to some answer for vibrant economies, because those ones are not going to ever accept a treaty that’s going to cause their economies to sink.

KONDRACKE: President Bush said the following, "I recognize that the surface of the earth is warmer and that an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem." That raises the question, What is your answer, Mr. President?

Now, his task is to lead the world and to come up with some formula that will answer the problem of global warming, which he admits is a problem, without imposing these rigid sanctions on...

BARNES: Yes, the key word.

KONDRACKE: OK...

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: Technology, OK, where is the technology plan? OK. The United States of America should come forward with a high-tech plan that would involve investment that we could actually be the winners of, you know, investing in the kind of tech, technology that it takes to control global warming, and, you know, I think it’s a failure of Bush, on Bush’s part not to have come forward with that.

BARNES: All those left-wingers around the world will buy it?

KONDRACKE: Well...

BARNES: No, of course not.

KONDRACKE: But we’ve got -- we can only lead by leading. OK, DOWN: special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald (search). His forcing New York Times reporter Judith Miller to go to jail for not giving up her source of the CIA leak, even though Fitzgerald knows who the leaker is, is way over the top. You know, the best I can figure is that what we have here is another Captain Ahab situation in the special prosecutor’s office. I mean, Ken Starr, same thing happened. I mean, the quarry becomes the whole wide world, you know, and you sort of wander off and it ruins you.

The question is, who is the quarry in this case? Karl Rove (search) says it’s not him. And yet, you know, Fitzgerald is chasing somebody if it’s not Karl Rove, who is it?

BARNES: Here’s my problem with the whole case, and that is that I don’t think a crime was committed. Bob Novak (search) says that, who originally reported, that this woman was a CIA agent said not to him, he didn’t get a leak. Her name just came out in casual conversation with somebody from the White House.

So where’s the crime? You are way out of bounds if you think the crime is that Judith Miller (search) of The New York Times or Matt Cooper (search) of TIME magazine, they’re not fully disclosing their sources. If that, that’s the crime, I mean, this guy, obsession is the right word, no doubt about it. All right.

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