MARTIN WALKER, EDITOR, UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL: Well, I think it was important in the context of a UN that seemed to be becoming a forum for anti-Americanism. It wasn't just Chavez, it was Iran's President Ahmadinejad, that was coming off the big meeting of the non-aligned countries in Cuba with Fidel Castro at last feeling not so alone as the high priest of anti-Americanism and all that was great sort of knock-about stuff and the Democrats with an election coming up thought it was very useful.
The reality of this is that the Americans aren't taking it seriously. Six months ago they were when they thought there was a red tide or a pink tide of leftism coming in Latin America and certainly Chavez in Venezuela and Morales in Bolivia suggested that but then that red tide didn't carry on in Peru and it didn't carry on in the elections in Mexico and, moreover, there's not much that Chavez in Venezuela can do.
His main market is the US and that's because his oil is so thick and loaded with sulfur only US refineries can deal with it. His main outlet is something like a couple of thousand gas stations called Sitco, owned by Venezuela, and where do they sell? In the USA. He's as dependent upon them as they are upon him and I don't think the Chinese are going to be able to refine the kind of oil he produces. So the Americans aren't really taking this Latin American posturing all that seriously.

GEORGE NEGUS: Since then, of course, the Chavez story has been taken off the front pages by that intelligence report that said the war on Iraq has made the US less safe - in fact, it spawned the recruitment of Islamic terrorists. And now today George Bush is not only debunking that report, he's also declassified at least part of it, claiming it's got no relevance to the war on terror.

MARTIN WALKER: What it is is a national intelligence estimate, which is to say it's the best assessed views of the dozen guys who head the various parts of the US intelligence system and, like all of these reports, it's something of a compromise, something of a consensus. We don't know exactly yet what it does say in full. What we do know - the bits that we've seen produced - say that it's clear that Iraq has become an attraction point for anti-Americanism, for terrorists and so on. It doesn't say that America has become more at risk since the war on Iran, although you could read that interpretation into it. The chief intelligence honcho Negroponte has said "No, no, we don't say America is less safe." The Democrats are all over this. There's an election in six weeks. At this time in the political season, George, truth, facts, reality tend not to be taken too seriously. It's the immediate impact of the headline that matters and the Democrats have got what they wanted - "America less safe."

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, just how worrying are the polls for George Bush at the moment? How would you describe the state of his political health?

MARTIN WALKER: Well, the fate of the Administration - the patient is sitting up and taking nourishment. He clearly hit bottom back in May, June when he got down to 31% approval rating, Dick Cheney was down to 15% approval rating. Bush is now up to 42%, 43% approval. Even some Republican senators looked to be in real trouble, like Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, Mike deWine in Ohio, their numbers are going up again. Now what's happened is that gas prices, oil prices, have started to come down as the oil price drops, so people aren't feeling quite so miserable.
Secondly, the Republicans - traditional Republican voters who got really annoyed back in the spring and said, "I'm not voting for that George Bush anymore" - they've decided to come home because they've taken a look at what the Democratic alternative might be and, believe me, the Democratic leadership in the Congress is a great deal further to the left than the average Democratic voter in the country and so they're coming home. .

GEORGE NEGUS: September 11, of course, could have had an impact on those polls too. That could have been why Bush suddenly saw his stocks rising again.

MARTIN WALKER: Well, the polls were rising before that, but I think the way in which Bush has used the advantage of the bully pulpit of the presidency to set the agenda and to try again and make these elections - as he did in 2002, as he did in 2004 - to try and make these elections yet again about security, about the war on terror, "keeping you safer", national security, "I can do this better than Democrats". He can always play that card because he always tries to do it. .

GEORGE NEGUS: You've said to me in the past that the Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Bill Clinton gets a headline, but here in Australia we hardly hear a word from a Democratic leader of any kind.

MARTIN WALKER: Count yourself lucky. Wait till you meet them. There's Nancy Pilosi, who would be the Speaker of the Congress, a nice Californian woman, but quite far to the left. There's John Conyers, who would be chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He's on the record as saying he wants to impeach George Bush. There is Chuck Wrangle, who'd be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, the man in charge of the budget. He wants to freeze off all spending for the Iraq war.
These are pretty popular positions with Democratic Party activists. They don't quite play in the mainstream of American politics nor, indeed, with those centrist voters who are going to be making the decisions in not just this mid-term election but in 2008 as well. The Democrats in Congress are to the left of the nation as a whole. .

GEORGE NEGUS: I notice that you didn't include Hillary Clinton in that list. Is it pure political fantasy that she could find herself up for Democratic nomination for president?

MARTIN WALKER: Look, if she wants to run, she will get the nomination 'cause she's got more money than God. She's in politics. In American politics you don't even get here unless you do want to run for the presidency. This is her chance - if she ducks it this time, it won't come again. I think she's going to run and I think that she's going to make the calculation upon the basis of the state of the US economy. .

GEORGE NEGUS: What about John McCain? Is he the Bush replacement? Who are the Republicans looking at as their nominee in 2008?

MARTIN WALKER: Well, I think McCain has got to be the frontrunner, but there's other figures - there's Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, there's Chuck Hegel, there's a handful of other people you've heard perhaps less of like Senator Allen from Virginia. But the star of their show is going to be John McCain, and, who knows, he might be running with that attractive black lady, Condoleezza Rice, as his running mate. .

GEORGE NEGUS: Is that really a serious possibility?

MARTIN WALKER: That's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing that there is talk under way. Because one of the things about Condoleezza Rice going as a running mate with John McCain is that that would automatically seal or heal that breach within the Republican Party because Condy is the Bush legacy, McCain is the feisty independent south-westerner. It could be a very powerful ticket. .

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, if we could just duck across the Atlantic for a moment. Tony Blair is now on the way out, officially. What difference will that make to American-English relations and by implication, ourselves, Australia, as we're part of the coalition of the willing. We know Tony Blair to be unequivocally pro-George Bush. But what about Gordon Brown?

MARTIN WALKER: I've known Gordon a long time. He adores the USA. He's even more pro-American than Tony Blair. In the week that Blair announced he was going to step down, Gordon heard from some friends who shall be nameless in Washington, that there was some concern around Dick Cheney that he was a socialist and not nearly as pro-American as Blair. And so Gordon wrote an op-ed piece in the 'Sun' - Rupert Murdoch's 'Sun' daily newspaper - saying how much he loved the USA, how proud he was that British troops were standing in the front line shoulder to shoulder with their American friends in the war on terrorism. That was aimed directly at the White House to reassure them.
The problem is, although it is going to reassure the White House, it could well guarantee that Gordon will lose the next election to the Conservative David Cameron who is being very much more against the war and very much more cool about the Americans. .

GEORGE NEGUS: Martin, we'll have to leave it there, unfortunately. Good to talk to you again. And down the track, I'll definitely remind you of what you said about Hillary Clinton being the Democratic candidate.

MARTIN WALKER: Well, we'll see. I'd like to see her run. .

GEORGE NEGUS: It certainly would be interesting. Martin, thanks again. Good to talk to you.

MARTIN WALKER: My pleasure. Bye, George.

Producer / Researcher
CATHY CAREY

Editor
STEVE HARROP