Allies Axed

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Allies Axed
The Spanish election was a defeat for the Popular Party -- and for George W. Bush, says foreign-policy expert Ivo Daalder.

The socialists are in; the conservatives are out. Three days after a terrorist attack in Madrid killed 200 people, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party won the national elections, receiving more votes than the successor chosen by former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar. Ivo Daalder, 44, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and the co-author of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, explains what the Spanish election could mean for Americans.

What effect will the Spanish elections have on Bush?

Bush had a very, very close relationship with Aznar -- as underscored by the fact that when he made his first presidential trip to Europe, his first stop was Madrid. He used to point to Aznar as a way to justify what he was doing in terms of foreign policy. He'd say, more or less, "Here's a man who supports me, even though 90 percent of his population is against what we're doing in Iraq. What a strong, principled leader." But the fact that 90 percent of the people did not support Aznar led to his downfall. So the defeat of one of the staunchest members of the "coalition of the willing" is a major defeat for George Bush. The Spanish election was a referendum not only on Aznar but on Bush as well. They both lost.

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Allies Axed