Bush Makes Progress at G8

Keeping up with yesterday's tour d'G8, it looks like Bush is having a pretty good summit. He woke up sick this morning--a stomach virus, said aides--and had to ask France's new president, NIcholas Sarkozy, to hold their bilateral meeting in his room. But the big news out of the summit was the climate change agreement and some thaw with Vladimir Putin. German Chancellor Angela Merkel got what she wanted, the U.S. to consider an agreement to cut greenhouse gases by 50% by 2050 and to move President Bush's proposals on climate change into the U.N. process. More talk, sure--but hey at least it's everyone's kind of on the same page now. Putin surprised everyone with his proposal that the U.S. use a Russian radar base in Azerbaijan for its missile defense rather than build a new facility in the Czech Republic. The Russians only lease the base and it's not sophisticated enough for the new technology of missile defense, but at least Bush and Putin are talking. I think the moderation of the second term is slowly starting to pay off--the willingness to talk to Iran, the movement on climate change. Okay, so working with Democrats on an immigration bill ended in total defeat but in the movements of the last few days you begin to see how Bush might end his term at over a 50% approval rating.....