So World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz will leave office in June….around the same time as the British Prime Minister leaves his post. As I pondered over that interesting coincidence I decided to take a look at the transcript of the press conference between President Bush and the P.M. I wanted to see if there was anything to suggest that President Bush was likely to follow the advice of this blogger and other, far more notable, commentators and consider Mr. Blair for the W.B. post.  

This portion of the transcript made interesting reading:

“BUSH: We talked about, of course, Africa. We spent a lot of time talking about Africa. I told the prime minister that the AIDS initiative that got started under my administration will continue; that I’ll work with Congress to make sure that the PEPFAR initiative that has been so effective in getting anti-retroviral drugs to people on that continent will continue. It’s an important initiative of ours. I applaud the prime minister’s education initiative on the continent of Africa. It’s a bold stroke. And we look forward to working with you on that initiative.”

and then there was this piece:

“BUSH: We talked, of course, about climate change. We spent a lot of time on climate change. And I agree with the prime minister: As I have stated publicly, this is a serious issue, and the United States takes it seriously, just like we take energy security seriously. We talked about the upcoming G-8. And I assured the prime minister we want to be a part of a solution, that we want to work constructively together. He’s got some really good ideas on how to advance the technologies that are going to be necessary to help solve this problem. And I told him I’ve got some good ideas as how to convince China and India to be a part of a global solution. We have a lot of common ground that we’ve been discussing today.”

Not definitive for sure but it certainly doesn’t hurt the P.M.

I truely believe that the winning move for the President to make is to nominate Tony Blair to be the next head of the world’s most important International Financial Institution - it would be good for the President, the World Bank and U.S.-Europe relations…I just hope the people advising Mr. Bush are listening and willing to consider such a move.

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