The European education of George W.

Practically speaking, it matters little that Bush seems to have a seventh grade grasp of geopolitics. The key question is: What does this mean about how Bush will handle foreign policy during the remaining three and a half years of his term?

What's clear now, if it wasn't before, is that no one knows the answer to that question, least of all George W. Bush himself. As someone given to flopping around from position to position as he heeds the advice first of one White House faction and then another, he often seems wildly unpredictable. Soon after taking office, he alarmed Russia experts by seeming to go out of his way to ratchet up hostilities with Russia by expelling 50 alleged spies in retaliation for the Robert Hanssen spy affair. Fast forward to Saturday in Slovenia and you had Bush assuring us that the leader whose troops routinely murder civilians in Chechnya each week is "an honest, straightforward man."

Bush and his handlers may be right that in the modern media age, being president is all about selling images, all about playing the part. As the son of an ultimate Washington insider, he somehow cast himself in the highly improbable role as outsider during the campaign. But one part Bush cannot convincingly play is that of the seasoned old pro of international relations -- it's certainly not a role he could have learned hanging out at the ballpark as part owner of the Texas Rangers. When Bush talked about looking into Putin's eyes and seeing his soul, it sounded like he had been prepped by Rice to mention the "Russian soul," and figured this was his chance.

But it's Bush's single-mindedness in dealing with the Russians that is most unsettling. He'll do anything to push through his missile defense plan -- including buying off the Russians (Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans are heading to Moscow soon, Bush told Putin) if he has to. Worse yet, he'll soft-pedal the moral stain of Chechnya if it suits his purpose.

"I was able to get a sense of his soul," Bush told the cameras after his visit with Putin Saturday. "He's an honest, straightforward man who loves his country. He loves his family ... I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him."

This personalization of the political may play well to a distracted American public, but that does not make it acceptable, given the realities of what's happening right now. As the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl wrote this week: "What officialdom in Moscow and Washington alike don't want to hear is that the campaign by the Russian military and police against Chechnya's separatists has degenerated into a full-fledged dirty war, complete with disappearances, mass graves, systematic torture and summary execution of civilians. In its scale and ferocity, it far exceeds the campaign Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic waged against the Albanians of Kosovo before NATO intervention; in the stunning impunity of its state-sponsored brutality, it is like the Latin American dirty wars of the 1970s."

Imagine if Bush had met with Milosevic when he drove the ethnic-Albanians out of Kosovo a few years back -- and told the world how "honest" and "straightforward" he was.

So what's the world to make of the new American president? Is he as clueless as he so often seems, for example talking on this European trip about how no one should call him a unilateralist, since he's willing to listen? Bush apparently forgot that unilateralism refers to action -- and that listening without hearing is meaningless. It's too soon to tell, but perhaps Bush will absorb enough from this trip that his famously short attention span won't be as short next time he holds an Oval Office meeting with his advisors on the subject of Europe.

This week's visit was just a warm-up for a future trip to Europe, which helps explain the cowardly scheduling. (Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Poland and Slovenia?) The man needed to go for a little foreign-policy ride on training wheels -- and that's what he did. He even fell down a few times.

He found out that the pats on the shoulder he likes to give so much only go so far in cementing new relationships with his fellow leaders. Diplomacy requires finesse and etiquette. The backstage talk between heads of state sounded pretty nasty at times, based on the quotes that trickled out into the press. As one "source" sniffed to the London Independent about the tone, "Bush is certainly not a diplomat."

No, he's not. But it's early enough to hold out hope that he's at least a man who can learn from the education he's receiving, and even possibly develop some of what used to be called the vision thing in his father's day. He returns to Europe next month, and he will stop off to visit Tony Blair in Britain on his way to Italy for a G-8 summit. That's two major European countries. A major improvement on his current itinerary -- he'll be playing in the European big leagues. Bush made a lot of people mad this time out, and came across as needlessly clumsy. But once again, he may be stupid like a fox -- he may be setting himself up to be underestimated, so later everyone can herald all the progress he's made. Or maybe, he really is bull-headed enough to do just what he wants to do, no matter the consequences.

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