EUROPEANS FRET, FEARING A BOLDER BUSH: Reader John Chang sends this link, and notes that Gerhard Schroder should be as worried about his prospects as Jim Jeffords. Not much evidence that it’s sunk in, though:

“The likelihood that the American president will feel even more self-confident about his own views than prior to the election is great,” Karsten Voigt, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s U.S. affairs coordinator, told Reuters.

“But on the other side, I think that he needs to convince Europeans. And so far as military action (in Iraq) is concerned, he has not convinced the Germans — yet.”

The question that the Germans and the French need to be asking is not “what will Bush do to win us over,” but rather “what can we do to minimize the paybacks for our backstabbing?”