Bush, Merkel seem to be starting out on the right foot

US President George W. Bush shakes hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office of the White House on Friday. PHOTO: AP

It's probably far too early to venture a prediction, but somehow Angela Merkel's seemingly warm first meeting with US President George W. Bush just might blossom into a "special relationship."

Yet as some past pairings exemplify, a warm bond with a US president hasn't always paid off for foreign leaders.

Former Franklin D. Roosevelt had Winston Churchill, former president Ronald Reagan had Margaret Thatcher, and Bush already has Tony Blair.

All three presidents' partners were British. Merkel is the German chancellor. But her apparent willingness to work with Bush on trying to stop Iran's nuclear program, and in other areas, could be the start of a special closeness.

Granted, both Bush and Merkel alluded to their private 45 minute White House meeting on Friday as having its "candid" moments, a diplomatic reference to differences of view. But there was far more harmony evident than discord.

Bush Merkel, the first woman to lead Germany, smart, spirited and "plenty capable."

Merkel, for her part, said "we have a lot in common" and that she hoped "we are opening a new chapter" in US-German relations.

Roosevelt's with Churchill was vital in rescuing the UK from Hitler. Thatcher worked with Reagan to demoralize the Soviet Union. And Blair was Bush's best friend in a mostly unpopular war that deposed Saddam Hussein.

Blair's reflexive support for Bush over Iraq prompted sneering references to him at home as being the president's lap dog.

It isn't always popular to be too close to the US. In the Philippines, anti-martial law activists ridiculed the late president Ferdinand Marcos through much of his presidency as being the "puppy" of the US.

And Blair's support for Bush rankled many in the UK, especially because the prime minister was supposed to be moderately left of center, not in league with a conservative of Bush's stripe.

Blair the UK into the war in Iraq and keeps troops in the country today. His war partnership with Bush was one reason his Labour Party's majority was reduced when he was re-elected to last May.

In the case of Reagan and Thatcher there was a shared conservative view of the world, of free markets and a shared antipathy to the Soviet Union.

And as Merkel disagreed with Bush over maintaining a prison camp for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Reagan and Thatcher were not always on the same page.

During the Falklands war in 1982, Reagan called to ask for a cease-fire. Thatcher refused. And Thatcher said she felt "dismayed and let down" by the 1983 US invasion of Grenada.

The budding ties between Bush and Merkel may be magnified by the known distaste that Bush and Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, had for each other.