European leaders urged President Bush to work closely with America’s allies on issues like terrorism and the environment in his second term, while critics of the president worried re-election would embolden him to pursue conservative policies more aggressively than ever.
Many European newspapers greeted the president’s triumph with dismay.
“Oops �€” they did it again,” Germany’s left-leaning Tageszeitung newspaper said in a front-page English headline.
“How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?” Britain’s liberal Daily Mirror tabloid asked. “March of the Moral Majority,” said the front page of the Daily Mail, above a photo of Mr. Bush with his wife and daughters.
In a strongly worded editorial the Daily Mirror said, “America has chosen a menacingly immature buffoon who likened the pursuit of the 9/11 terrorists to a Wild West, Wanted Dead or Alive man-hunt and, during the Afghanistan war, kept a baseball scorecard in his drawer, notching up hits when news came through of enemy deaths.”
In Spain, the conservative Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which vehemently opposed the Iraq war, printed a cartoon showing Osama bin Laden holding up Mr. Bush’s arm in triumph.
CBS 2 Chicago WBBM-TV: World: Mixed Reviews For Bush
World: Mixed Reviews For Bush
