Hightower Lowdown

In the first hours of our recent spy-plane face-off with China, things got a bit dicey because George W. was having a testosterone rush. His belligerent message was: "Give us back our people and our secret airplane now . . . or else!"

Or else what? Well, he didn't know, so he just had his little fit and left it at that.

But shortly thereafter, our president became a model of diplomatic decorum, carefully mincing words and expressing nine kinds of "regret." The news media theorized that senior officials like Secretary of State Colin Powell had intervened to cool the hot rhetoric.

We think someone else intervened. You could almost hear Motorola, Boeing, General Motors, Kodak, and others bellowing into his telephone: "Good God almighty, boy, do you know how many billions we've sunk into building Chinese factories, do you know how much profit we make off cheap Chinese labor? And do you not remember that we put up millions of dollars to ensconce you in the White House to protect all this?"

Bush's own Uncle Prescott was in China for a business meeting during the incident and got snubbed by Chinese officials. You can bet he made a call, too!

It wasn't principle or national security driving Bush's negotiations—it was corporate cash.