Profiles in courage: Bush in China

Bush walks tightrope over rights and respect for China

Aides organizing President George W. Bush's trip to China for the Olympics considered having him worship at a house church, one of the underground religious institutions that routinely face harassment, but the Chinese refused.

Pastors, lawyers and other political activists that Bush considered meeting in Beijing as a powerful signal of support have instead been ordered by the authorities to leave the city during the president's visit. Scores of others have been arrested.

The idea of giving a Reaganesque "tear down this wall" speech on human rights in China - as members of Congress and others have called on Bush to do - has been abandoned as potentially insulting to the president's hosts, said one senior administration official. It would be unlikely that most Chinese would see or hear it anyway, because of state control of the media.

There we go, "I was gonna do all sorts of good stuff over there to highlight oppression and human rights abuses, but I figured since it wouldn't get on Chinese TV and that the oppressors would get offended if I pointed out their oppression we decided just to watch basketball."

But don't worry, President Bush swore to jawbone some action out of Hu Jintao behind closed doors. Because if there's anything that spurs action in a communist state it's a polite ask behind closed doors, during the most heightened security state your country has been in since decades, after weeks of canceling potentially troublesome events so as to appear as meek as possible. I'm sure after all the nothing, Jintao will be raring to listen to the guy who'll be out of office in January.

That's exactly why Bush should've done something. He's in the "fuck it I'm done" period of his Presidency. He's doing crazy shit back here because he's unafraid of the repercussions, why can't that translate overseas? Why not take the bravado that led you to disregard nearly all of our laws and Constitutional amendments and export it overseas. It's our greatest renewable national resource: your smug entitled sense that you get to do whatever you want. Use it. Just not here.