Skwege said:
Outside of some personal and professional courtesy, I doubt Bono wants Bush re-elected any more so than the rest of the world.
From an article in The Age newspaper (full article is on the U2 News page of this site)... I think it's titled 'The Saint & The Ham' or something similar.
Bono obviously is not gonna say whether he wants Bush re-elected or not, but if he supported Bush it would be a monumental reversal of character and personality for Bono. Basically Bush has the key to the safe that Bono wants cash from.
Anyway, the article... (and a bit of his opinion on Bill Clinton for comparison
)
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Bono believes that he comes "from the other side of the road" to George Bush. "I've lost my colour in order to do the work that I do. The people who often pay for one's convictions are other people. But President Bush and the people around him and that I deal with regularly, and Colin Powell, have been true to their word dealing with me on two issues. One was something called the Millennium Challenge Account, into which he put $US10 billion for three years, which was a new way of seeing aid as a sort of fast track to countries that were tackling corruption and had good governments.
"We worked incredibly closely with them on the Millennium Challenge Account. As a result, I appeared in a photograph with President Bush. Now this, of course, set my band on edge, and meeting Jesse Helms and George Bush for someone like the Edge, he just can't get his head around it.
"But I have always said that there are too many lives at stake here to play politics. We have to elevate the debate. We have to, and I have to stay not bi-partisan but actually non-partisan.
"It is very important not to make caricatures of people. One of the caricatures of Bush in Europe is that he is a figurehead and that there are forces around him that are running the show. I am absolutely sure, having been in his company, that he is definitely in charge. That might make people even more nervous, but he has a passion for Africa and the AIDS emergency, and my job is to turn his passion into cash."
As for Bill Clinton, Bono describes him as "a brain on a stick".
"He has humour and he has a great ear for a new idea. Great ideas are like great melody lines. They have a certain inevitability, a certain clarity, a certain instant memorability. The striking thing about Bill Clinton's White House when he first came into office, and I spent some time there, was just how many young people, people younger than me, were in extremely important positions, because he always wanted fresh insights, fresh minds. I think that because he didn't get a majority in Congress, that he needed to get a lot of his ideas through, and because he got distracted with the Monica Lewinsky affair, I think we missed some of the greatness that he had in potential."