by Mark Silva
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin – the retaining time in office limited for both leaders, but closing in sooner in Putin’s case – are talking about “handing it off to the next presidents.’’
So says the traveling White House en route to meetings in the Russian resort of Sochi.
Who wouldn’t love to hear Bush’s answer to the questions that Putin – and certainly his successor, Dmitri Medvedev – are sure to be asking Bush over dinner tonight? How about that McCain? And what about this Obama? And could you give us the names of some superdelegates to call for Clinton?
“This is an opportunity for both presidents to have a broad range of discussion on many of the issues they've been both working on over the past eight years,’’ Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, said en route to Sochi today aboard Air Force One.
“As you recall, President Bush said that when he talked to President Putin and suggested this idea in a letter, of working together to put down in words the range of issues that they work on together,’’ Perino said, “so that the next presidents -- the Russian one will obviously take office before ours does in January 2009 -- that they would have a nice, smooth transition and be able to continue the cooperation on the major areas, of which -- let me just remind you of the four broad areas: Security cooperation, non-proliferation, counterterrorism, and economic issues.
“I anticipate that the leaders tomorrow will continue to have discussions on all of those areas, while they also deepen and broaden the relationship, before handing it off to the next presidents,’’ Peron said. “We're calling it a strategic framework….’’
Tonight, the two presidents planned a social dinner, including Putin’s successor, Medvedev. Tomorrow, more meetings and a brief press conference – presumably more friendly than the one Bush and Putin held in Bratislava a few years back after Bush lectured Putin about democracy in Russia and Putin maintained that his system was not unlike the Electoral College, certainly democratic?
Don’t look for any dinner-table agreement over the defensive missile battery that Bush wants to build in Poland, however.
“I think that would be premature,’’ Perino acknowledged. “We have made great strides in bringing confidence to the Russians that this system is not aimed at Russia, and Russia is not the enemy. You've heard the president say he believes the Cold War is over.
“And if you look at what NATO just did this past week on missile defense, people have come to the realization that together, working cooperatively, we can help deter or prevent an attack from a rogue nation in the Middle East, not from Russia,’’ she said. .
Bush, who once famously concluded much about Putin after his first eye-to-eye meeting with the Russian leader, has met Medvedev before, but not in his capacity as president-elect.
“I think that when the president meets with President-elect Medvedev,’’ she said, “he will be able to help solidify that smooth transition that both Presidents are seeking for their… successors.’’
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