Bush’s successor may have a softer bark, but the bite will be the same

AGAINST my better judgment, I have started Christmas shopping. Wandering aimlessly around Easons the other day, they seemed to be doing a brisk business in Bush countdown calendars. A variant on the traditional Advent calendar, it enables you to tick off the remaining days until a new US president is elected next November and Dubya leaves the White House in January 2009.

I guess one of those calendars will find a welcome place in the stockings of some of the great and the good — or the plain rich — who shelled out €1,600 each to attend a 20-minute, off-the-cuff speech by former President Bill Clinton in Dublin earlier this month with contributions going to his wife’s campaign.

Post-Good Friday, the Raglan Road socialites were paying for the chance to say they were hobnobbing with Slick Willie, not to bend the ear of the possible first First Gentleman. Still, it’s a fair bet that the guests — mainly Irish, some American — will be hoping for a major reorientation in US foreign policy in 2009.