Now why is it that the WSJ goes on backing Blair and pouring scorn on a lower-profile candidate like van Rompuy?

Could it be (I don't know, just guessing) that Blair would be well aligned with the interests the WSJ defends?

Which are..?

1. Wall Street
   
2. American hegemony
   
3. The Anglo Disease
   
4. All the above

Bernard:

the 62-year-old Belgian scored low in a measure of "self-confidence" and "will to power."

If he got to Prime Minister nonetheless, it means that he probably has enough of both, and simply scored "relatively low" among the sociopathic manipulators he has for peers.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, perhaps best known outside his native Netherlands for his resemblance to Harry Potter, is Ladbrokes' second favorite. Mr. Blair is third, followed by Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg, a nation with a population one-fifth of Brooklyn's.

Irrelevant Europe, here we come!

When European nations formed a free-trade bloc a half-century ago, Germans and Frenchmen dominated.

Sure, let's pretend that the EEC was just a "free-trade bloc". Gah

The group has expanded greatly but even now, votes cast by leaders of the EU's "Big Six" -- Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and the U.K., with more than 350 million Europeans between them -- carry more weight than those cast by smaller members.

Fascinating order to list the big 6. It's not alphabetical, it's not historical, it's not geographical, it's not population or GDP or land surface or GDP/head... The only sense I can make of this is that they are listed in perceived increasing order of submission to the US today...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes