PRESIDENT BUSH LOVES THOSE APPROVAL RATINGS

President Bush's approval ratings are in the pits. Only 39 percent of Americans think he is doing a good job.

Then why is he wearing such a happy grin in the Oval Office?

It seems that his old enemy, President Jacques Chirac of France, has fallen harder, faster and further. And while President Bush still has some juice left, poor old nasty Chirac seems to have been totally neutered by events in France.

The first big blow occurred when Chirac's grand strategy of a European Union dominated by France and Germany fell apart as French voters shouted "Non!" to the Euro Constitution Mr. Chirac was heavily promoting. The failure of the Euro Constitution destroyed much of Chirac's reputation in France and in most other European countries.

Then came the dismal performance of the French economy, with growth going stagnant and unemployment clinging to double digit figures. France's economy has not made Chirac popular with voters who elected him on the basis of his promise of a "healthy, wealthy and growing" welfare state.

Then came the negotiations at the World Trade Organization over agricultural subsidies used by the USA and France to squeeze out the poor farmers of the developing nations. The governments of poorer nations finally got some spine and vetoed all the trade negotiations over the single issue of French and American farm subsidies.

While the Bush administration eventually saw the error and prejudice of its ways and offered 60 percent reductions, the French held out for far smaller concessions. This caused the world's developing nations to turn their wrath away from the USA and onto Chirac and France, which now has made matters worse by threatening to veto any agreement come to by the developing nations and the USA.

Finally, Chirac's last vestige of prestige is destroyed by the burning of Paris, Cannes, Nice and other towns as disaffected Muslim youths rebel against the French government. With rioting, burning, and uncontrollable chaos spreading for the tenth day, neighboring Germany and Italy have become fearful of a Europe-wide contagion of Muslim violence.

It seems that Chirac and his Prime minister Dominique de Villepin (another USA enemy) have been powerless in the face of the Muslim firestorm enveloping France. During the fifth day of the riots, de Villepin called a meeting of the affected mayors and promised to come up with an action plan in thirty days. He said this to incredulous mayors whose towns were presently burning.

(While it was true that FEMA's "Brownie" was pathetically out of it for three days during Hurricane Rita, you would have to award the "International Gold Clueless Medal" to Dominique de Villepin. That personification of French elitist snobbery didn't have the vaguest notion of his country's peril during seven straight days of rioting, burning, and bombing. Apparently Chirac and de Villepin are too snooty to watch CNN.)

Many a French politician, with Chirac's tacit approval, has blamed the USA and Israel for exacerbating the Muslim problem in the Middle East. But no one has claimed that the USA was in any way responsible for the burning of Paris and France. The Muslims seem to agree that the blame belongs to the French government, the French police and the religious prejudice of elitist French business leaders.

The United States saved France from destruction three times in the 20th century. American doughboys rescued France in World War I as the exhausted French army was about to capitulate to German General Ludendorf's 1918 spring offensive. American GIs liberated France from the Nazi occupation during World War II. And with the Marshall Plan, President Eisenhower saved France from succumbing to the Communists during the post-war heyday of Soviet power.

But France's luck may have run out.

Nobody seems capable of saving the French from themselves.