PrintDecember 1, 2006
European reaction to Dem win
The mainstream media is enthusiastic to let us know that "the world welcomes the outcome of the U.S. mid-term elections". In addition to the cheers from the world's worst tyrants and terrorist groups the Democrats should not be proud of, European leaders are for the most part hoping that their dream of becoming an "active counter-weight to America" in the international arena now can come true.
With very few exceptions - notably pro-American countries like Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic - everyone in Europe is celebrating what they see as "the Americans' rejection of Bush's hegemonic wars". In Italy, a weakened leftist government (whom almost all polls show as growing unpopular even with its own voters) is calling to "build bridges" with the newly-elected Democratic majority in both the House and Senate.
The chief of the Chamber of Deputies, a communist, went further by affirming that the Republican losses are due to "Bush's war-mongering policies and they show evidence of how fed up the Americans are with their President's agenda". The center-right opposition slammed these statements coming from an institutional authority whose role is not supposed to be one of rebuking other countries' leaders. The Italian press,both written and televised, described unanimously this as "the punishment the American voters inflicted to Bush".
Overall, there's a total misunderstanding of the American politics on the part of the Europeans, mainly due to their failure to understand how the U.S. system of governance works, forgetting - to mention just one of a few examples - that the scenario came out of these elections is not at all new in the long history of democracy in the United States.
The media and the political class in the Old Continent ignore the fact that the party that wins the mid-term elections is not automatically the one that will win the presidential ones.
Chances are high that the Democratic Party-controlled houses will contribute much to pave the way for a Republican win in 2008.
It's high time for the Europeans to quit dreaming of balancing the U.S. "hegemony" in world affairs while, at the very same time, insisting in pursuing a morally-bankrupted foreign policy which has proven to be harmful to the war on terror and stability in the turmoiled regions of the world.
The sooner the cheering folks come to grips with reality on the ground, the better it will be for themselves - and for everyone.
Stefania Lapenna
Stefania Lapenna
