The good news for the Bush campaign is that this week it won the support of two leaders representing tens of millions of people. The bad news is that none of those people live in the United States.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin asserted: "International terrorism has as its goal to prevent the election of President Bush to a second term. If they achieve that goal, then that will give international terrorism a new impulse and extra power."
The next day, Hasan Rowhani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, announced that Tehran favored Bush's reelection. As Associated Press said, Iran "has a history of preferring Republicans over Democrats, who tend to press human rights issues."
Of course, neither Iranians nor Russians can vote in the United States. But that need not stop them from trying to influence the election.
The Guardian, a British newspaper, has enlisted its readers to write letters to Ohioans urging them to vote against Bush. Perhaps the mullahs on Iran's Guardian Council could try to cancel them out. ("Dear Infidel: We are writing to exhort you to reject the son of a pig John Kerry, who plans to raise your taxes and who lets his wife dress like a whore.")
It's ironic that while Republicans have mocked Kerry for claiming the support of foreign leaders, it is Bush who has reaped the only two actual foreign leader endorsements. The deeper irony is who's endorsing him.
Bush, remember, claims that the centerpiece of his foreign policy is democracy. Alas, his overseas support comes from an aspiring Russian strongman and an Iranian theocrat. So, while Bush is declaring, as he did last week, that "we will win the war on terror and make America safer by advancing the cause of freedom and democracy," at least two enemies of democracy are betting he won't.
There are two problems with Bush's policy of fostering democracy everywhere. The first is that it's not his actual policy. Bush's closest allies include a rogues gallery of thugs and other democracy-haters. He not only stood by but actively blessed efforts by Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to snuff out opposition parties (in Pakistan's case, even secular ones).
With Uzbekistan, Bush initiated a strategic partnership in 2002 that was supposed to be conditioned upon human rights improvements, but he waived the requirement for each of the last two years.
