I mean, Blair, for god's sake. It would be a public relations disaster at the very minimum. Is Sarkozy really so foolish? Or does he aim to discredit and weaken the Union on purpose? What could possible motivate him to push for Blair?

Establishing Credibility

And the US doesn't want to present evidence because it wants to be able to do it, to act without evidence. That's a crucial part of the reaction. You will notice that the US did not ask for Security Council authorization which they probably could have gotten this time, not for pretty reasons, but because the other permanent members of the Security Council are also terrorist states. They are happy to join a coalition against what they call terror, namely in support of their own terror. Like Russia wasn't going to veto, they love it. So the US probably could have gotten Security Council authorization but it didn't want it. And it didn't want it because it follows a long-standing principle which is not George Bush, it was explicit in the Clinton administration, articulated and goes back much further and that is that we have the right to act unilaterally. We don't want international authorization because we act unilaterally and therefore we don't want it. We don't care about evidence. We don't care about negotiation. We don't care about treaties. We are the strongest guy around; the toughest thug on the block. We do what we want. Authorization is a bad thing and therefore must be avoided. There is even a name for it in the technical literature. It's called establishing credibility. You have to establish credibility. That's an important factor in many policies. It was the official reason given for the war in the Balkans and the most plausible reason.

You want to know what credibility means, ask your favorite Mafia Don. He'll explain to you what credibility means. And it's the same in international affairs, except it's talked about in universities using big words, and that sort of thing. But it's basically the same principle. And it makes sense. And it usually works. The main historian who has written about this in the last couple years is Charles Tilly with a book called Coercion, Capital, and European States. He points out that violence has been the leading principle of Europe for hundreds of years and the reason is because it works. You know, it's very reasonable. It almost always works. When you have an overwhelming predominance of violence and a culture of violence behind it. So therefore it makes sense to follow it. Well, those are all problems in pursuing lawful paths. And if you did try to follow them you'd really open some very dangerous doors. Like the US is demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden. And they are responding in a way which is regarded as totally absurd and outlandish in the west, namely they are saying, Ok, but first give us some evidence. In the west, that is considered ludicrous. It's a sign of their criminality. How can they ask for evidence? I mean if somebody asked us to hand someone over, we'd do it tomorrow. We wouldn't ask for any evidence. [crowd laughter].

To the Socialists he's better than a Christian Democrat; to the later he's better than any other Socialist.

Exactly, this is yet another master move by The Enemy™

Normally one would expect Barroso to be followed by a member of the PES. Now, what  could be better for the EPP that to propose a trojan horse of a "Socialist" who is a neocon war criminal and always got along better with the likes of Bush, Aznar, Berlusconi, Barroso, Balkenende, Klaus and the Kaczynski brothers than with any centre-left European leaders?

And the worst is that the PES will likely just say "cool, he's one of us".

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

Nigel Rees -- editor of Cassell's Humourous Quotations (2003; ISBN 0-304-36588-2; p. 344) -- notes that this "possibly apocryphal headline" was quoted by Robert Lacy on BBC Radio's Quote . . . Unquote in February, 1979. Rees mentions that Lacy had claimed it came from a 1942 issue of the News Chronicle, a now defunct British newspaper.

and for more details there's a link here that discusses this quote

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.