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Rep. David Dreier, whatever leadership position he ends up in after Tom DeLay's stepping down, is an affable team player with wider interests than one might suspect. Recently Dreier wrote the foreword to the new book The Next Superpower? The Rise of Europe and Its Challenge to the United States (Rowman & Littlefield) by Rockwell A. Schnabel, a longtime friend and fellow Californian who's just finished serving as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. (The book's coauthor is Francis X. Rocca, a longtime friend of mine living in Rome who among many fine things is a Yale Ph.D. and a former editor at The American Spectator.)

When Dreier was first elected to Congress in 1980 -- the same year Ronald Reagan was elected president -- the idea of a European Union, he writes, was far-fetched. Since then, especially after the fall of Communism, "European nations have formed a true single market in goods and labor and have removed many internal European barriers to trade in capital and services." Music to our ears. Dreier is especially pleased that Amb. Schnabel, who represented U.S. interests with distinction in Europe between 2001 and 2005, has now gone on to explain the EU to Americans.

The book is important: the U.S. has no more vital a political and economic relationship than with the European Union. It's good that Dreier's horizons are broader than your typical Washingtonian's.

topics:
Trade, European Union, Communism