“In contrast to the small-bore questions that American reporters posed to President Bush yesterday about his Iraq policy,” Dan Froomkin wrote in his White House Briefing column at washngtonpost.com, “two British journalists cut right to the central issue of the president’s credibility.”

It is in hopes that British or other foreign reporters will ask President Bush fundamental questions about life in these United States that American reporters somehow never seem to ask that I’m recycling Dan’s loud cheer for the BBC’s Nick Robinson and Bill Neely of ITV News. Here are five such fundamental questions:

• While sacrificing American and Iraqi lives in an attempt to bring democracy to the Middle East, have you tried to bring democracy to the capital of the United States, where citizens of the District of Columbia send their sons and daughters to Iraq and fully pay federal taxes just as do other Americans, but have no voting representation in Congress? Specifically, Mr. President, do you support or oppose the pending bipartisan bill that would give the city in which you live a vote in the House while adding a member to Utah’s House delegation?
• The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines a bribe as: “Something, such as money or a favor, offered to or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person’s views or conduct.” Do our election and lobbying laws legalize bribery, Mr. President?
• You have been clear, Mr. President, that corporate executives who commit financial fraud should be criminally prosecuted. Do you believe that corporate executives who knowingly and willfully market needlessly unsafe products that kill, injure, sicken, or inflict harm on the environment, or who recklessly endanger workers, should also be criminally prosecuted?
• Do you believe that basic health care is a human right, or, Mr. President, do you believe that the United States should remain alone among all the other industrialized countries in opposing tax-supported universal health care?
• For nearly six years now, you have repeatedly appointed as safety, health and environmental regulators industry executives and lobbyists who have dedicated their careers to enfeebling and destroying the very regulations that on taking office they swear to enforce. Could you describe the philosophy of governance that underlies these appointments, and would you tell us whether campaign contributions had any influence on these appointments?