Graded on a simple "pass-fail" basis,
America's first affirmative action president got through his initial made-for-TV crisis with a pass.

    Fortunately for George W. Bush, the Chinese spy plane affair wasn't half so dramatic or dangerous as media hype made it
seem. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich put it, Bush II's first big test was more like a "pop quiz."
    Once it became clear that the U.S. EP-3 airplane had made an emergency landing in Chinese territory due to an accidental
collision rather than hostile fire, and that the crew was safe and being treated humanely, resolving the issue became more an
exercise in semantics than high-stakes diplomacy.
    Since the airplane was too damaged to fly, the Chinese couldn't return it if they'd wanted to. Once the Chinese figured they'd
made their point, they had no reason to keep the American crew captive.
    It follows that here at Unsolicited Opinions Inc., we're not paying much attention to fanciful interpretations of who "won" or
"lost." It was a draw, period. Two big dogs met on a path. They bluffed, growled and postured. Then each went its way. For
each side, the trickiest part was handling its own domestic politics.
    It doesn't take a China scholar to understand the Beijing government's fix. Imagine a Chinese plane crash-landing in
California after colliding with a U.S. fighter jet whose pilot was lost at sea. Would any American president blame the incident
on his own pilot's recklessness, affirm China's right to fly espionage missions along the U.S. coast, and return the crew and
airplane with apologies? Not a chance.

    For similar reasons, Bush's initially testy "demands," as the media excitedly described them, couldn't have been met by any
imaginable Chinese government. It's hard to say whether Bush understood that before Secretary of State Colin Powell
explained it to him. Since he's quit giving press conferences, we may never know.
    Press accounts of Bush's initial televised statement described him as looking "tense," but we'd have said "apprehensive."
Not fearful of China, it appeared, but of blowing his lines and saying something transcendently dumb.
    It was interesting to watch the Chinese media turn the doomed pilot's pretty, young wife into an instant celebrity, then solicit
her favorable opinion of the American crew's release--exactly as would have happened in the U.S.A.

    One thing that's said to have goaded China's authoritarian leaders into brutalizing pro-democracy demonstrators in
Tiananmen Square in 1989 was a student-made model of the Statue of Liberty. We can't help but wonder if, in adopting the
conventions of American TV journalism, with its focus on individual expression and emotional immediacy, the Chinese haven't
given themselves a much more potent adversary than a papier-m‰chŽ statue. "
    A whole box of Pandoras," in the immortal words attributed to former Gov. Frank White.
    As Frank Rich also pointed out, the same big corporations that drive Bush II's domestic policies also drove the
administration's quick turn to pragmatism in the spy plane affair.

    Does the United States really seek a hostile, confrontational relationship with the world's single largest developing market?
Not if big-time GOP contributors like General Motors, Microsoft, Boeing and United Parcel Service get their way. GM alone
has more than $2 billion invested in a new auto factory in Shanghai. Given that Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card's last job was
as a lobbyist for GM, its investment looks to be in good hands. UPS, which got what it wanted when Bush II abolished new
ergonomics rules for American workers, staged a gala opening of its new cargo delivery service to China just last week. (We
doubt the Communist bosses will give UPS a hard time about repetitive stress syndrome, either.) Boeing, of course, hopes to
sell airplanes to Chinese domestic airlines, Microsoft to corner the Asian software market, etc.
    On the right, the only serious criticism of Bush's China caper has come from Rupert Murdoch's magazine, The Weekly
Standard, which called it "a national humiliation." But since the Australian media tycoon has for years been prostrating himself
before the Chinese regime in the interest of winning that country's TV satellite business--removing BBC programming after
China objected to its news broadcasts and taking a soft line on Chinese religious repression--it's unclear how long he'll tolerate
such editorial cheekiness.

Elsewhere, the near-idolatrous early coverage of Bush II by the Washington press clique has pretty much ended. Moreover, there are growing signs that the public isn't buying.

    A Harris Poll published April 14 showed the president's favorable rating of only 49 percent "the worst rating . . . at this point
in his presidency than any other president has had" since they began polling the question in 1964. (Bill Clinton was at 55
percent in April 1993.) In a Christian Science Monitor survey taken April 6-10 and published April 16, "Bush earned an
overall mark of only C-plus. . . . The president's grades had declined in seven of nine issues on which he made campaign
promises during the 2000 election. The poll determined that his public support dipped in every region of the country and among
all age groups. Even fellow Republicans gave him lower marks."
    Probably Bush II's numbers will rebound in the wake of the Chinese spy plane incident.
    After all, faced with a conflict between ideology and reality, the president did opt for the visible world. That's at least a
minimally encouraging sign.
    Even so, it's mostly the economy and the environment that worry Americans at the moment. Republicans can try to blame
Clinton all they want, but Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney came in talking down the economy to sell their tax cut, and
down it went.
    In terms of sheer political symbolism, moreover, arsenic in the drinking water may be the single dumbest move by an
American president in a very long time.
 
    Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.