If Gore had been elected, Secretary of State Holbrooke would probably be holding the very same talks in Europe he is now so energetically trying to disrupt. But Gore wasn't elected, and politics is politics. Daschle and his team now want a win. The Democrats know they'll have a hard time beating Bush on missile defense if the Europeans go along with the administration and don't make a fuss. Enter Richard Holbrooke.
Nobody knows better how to push European buttons.
First Holbrooke pricks European sensitivities about American bullying. Then he suggests that European leaders suffer from a testosterone shortage. Bush sees threats everywhere, but there are no threats. Osama bin Laden, he noted, has no missiles. Of course the Clinton administration of which Holbrooke was a part had no difficulty identifying potential missile threats other than bin Laden.