You're just visiting but friends arrange for companionship with someone from their circle in need of a little attention. Well, you are worldly, well-mannered, and know how to be nice so you politely agree -- and spend an evening as the dinner date of an aging self-celebrating diva who insists the pleasure is all yours.

That is how we size up Mr. Bush's dinner with Europe's reigning doyenne [sic], Jack.

Dinner with Jack! Imagine the excitement!

CHIRAC AND BUSH TO ENDURE WORKING DINNER TOGETHER

Monday's dinner date in Brussels will be a tough assignment for presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac, two antagonists who know they must suppress a deep mutual disdain in the interest of loftier political purpose.

"It is an extremely difficult relationship," said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the French Centre on the United States in Paris. "Chirac thinks Bush is superficial. Bush thinks Chirac is unprincipled and too wily for his own good."

A low point came at the 2003 Group of Eight (G8) summit in the Alpine resort of Evian when - according to a new book "Chirac against Bush" by two French journalists - Chirac made the spectacular faux pas of offering the American president - a reformed alcoholic - a case of wine and cognac.

More recently Chirac waited nearly a week after Bush's relection to telephone his congratulations - a delay which aides said was caused by the pressure of work. "We didn't believe a word of it - but pretended to," a US diplomat told the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur.

"Chirac thinks of himself as the doyen[ne] of the heads of state who count and expects to be treated with a certain deference. Bush doesn't see it quite like that," a senior French diplomat said in the same magazine article.

"For him Chirac is the aging head of a mediocre nation, while he is the young leader of the greatest power on earth. So he is the one who should be deferred to. Together they are like a pair of cocks in a henhouse," he said.

"They are so different in years, in background, in outlook, in everything. It makes for real personal rejection and animosity," said Nicole Bacharan, a researcher of Franco-American origin at the Foundation of Political Sciences in Paris.

So how did things turn out? To everyone's expectations.

BUSH-CHIRAC DINNER FALLS SHORT ON SUBSTANCE

"These guys are never going to be friends. But they are both pragmatists.

They know they are going to have to work together - and they know how to make the right gestures," said Nicole Bacharan, a specialist in Franco-US relations at the National Foundation for Political Science.

"George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac are talking. That doesn't mean they understand each other," said Luc de Barochez of the conservative daily Le Figaro.

"On the two burning issues of the day - Syria and Iran - their differences are flagrant. The row over Iraq may be more or less over, but the two presidents still have visions of the world which are at polar opposites," he said.

"Euro-American frictions have always concerned less the ends than the means of attaining them. Who can be against peace, democracy and prosperity in the Middle East? No-one is against getting rid of tyrants," argued the left-wing Liberation in an editorial.

"Once again France and America share the same goal of getting Iran and Syria to stop destabilising the region ... but to get there Bush still seems willing to contemplate the big military stick rather than the diplomatic carrot that France and its diplomatic partners are offering," it said.

The financial daily Les Echos agreed that fundamental differences in outlook between the US and France cannot be masked by diplomatic niceties.

"In spite of George W. Bush's real efforts to correct the messianic and unilateral image that has so fed anti-American sentiment in Europe, there are still two different approaches - two visions of society based on values that may be shared but are now evolving in different ways," it said.

Nonetheless, the caveats duly conceded, no-one was in a mood to be churlish about the Bush-Chirac reconciliation - however superficial it may prove to be. "In diplomacy tone matters," said Bacharan. "They did what they had to do."

Mr. Bush had a better time of it elsewhere:

CHARM AND SEDUCTION AMID THE CHANDELIERS

And then, quite suddenly, there he was. Under five of the biggest chandeliers in Brussels the president and his Belgian host entered to a standing and prolonged ovation. So prolonged, in fact, that Mr Bush had to gesture to his own people to encourage the audience to sit down.

Mr Verhofstadt seized his brief moment in the spotlight to make the kind of remarks that British Eurosceptics expect from a Belgian prime minister. ... But it was Mr Bush the audience had come to hear and he did not disappoint.

George Bush will never be a great orator. ... But he is a far better speaker than his most implacable detractors allow. And this speech was one by a politician at the top of his game. It was like listening to Caesar reviewing the condition of the Roman empire - daunting but irresistible.

And here's Le Figaro on Bruxelles:

The change in tone is spectacular. Until now, Washington's policy for transatlantic relations consisted of turning the European allies against each other. But Mr Bush has suddenly discovered that Europe exists. If it has taken him four years to realise this, then shouldn't we recognise that the Europeans are also largely to blame? Didn't they, for their part, take four years to accept that Mr Bush had been elected by America?

If it has taken him four years to realise this, then shouldn't we recognise that the Europeans are also largely to blame? Didn't they, for their part, take four years to accept that Mr Bush had been elected by America?

Priceless!

That's one paper - doesn't mean the politicians do yet. I have a feeling they'll just end up in their old waiting game (if they haven't already). Just wait Bush out. Four years from now they'll be able to tell America what to do and get whatever they want from America.

The idea of them waiting four years and doing nothing in the meantime may sound difficult, even impossible to us, but it's not like the europeans actually expect their leaders to *do* anything.

Four years from now they'll be able to tell America what to do and get whatever they want from America.

So you're predicting a Democrat win in '08?

No, I just meant that's what they're waiting for.

At this point, not knowing who will run I don't have a clue who will win (tho I'd very most likely prefer a Republican). Too much can change in four years to seriously make any predictions (with rare exceptions like Reagan's second term).