The 2008 U.S. election campaign has received more than the usual amount of coverage in Italy. One obvious reason for this is that nearly eight years of the Bush Administration have made clear to Italians how much the election of an American president matters to them. President Bush’s polling numbers were already low in Italy long before they plummeted in the United States. Not even Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s media tycoon-turned-prime minister, refers to Bush as “my dear friend George” anymore.
Yet Italians are also interested in this race because each of the candidates, in one way or another, has embodied a spirit of change for which Italians themselves long. In Italy, a country with perhaps the lowest representation of women in politics in the entire Western world, the possibility of President Hillary Clinton aroused great interest. Even the conservative candidate John McCain, with his charismatic maverick character, shines when compared with often dull Italian conservatives. But it has been Barack Obama, a man totally unknown to the Italian public just a year ago, who has received the widest coverage.
Not only that, his political personality and rhetoric have been imported to Italy. It is no coincidence that in his final rally before the March 2008 elections, center-left candidate Walter Veltroni concluded his speech by repeatedly exclaiming “Yes, we can!”, drawing wild applause from the thousands of supporters in Rome’s Piazza del Popolo.
Of course, the less admirable side of American politics attracts the Italian media as well: the smear campaigns, the flip-flopping, the personalization of politics. Reporters made fun of the party conventions, with all the balloons, funny hats and loud music. But the recognition that American democracy is alive and well, and capable of renewing itself, is what comes through most clearly to Italians, largely because of the stark contrast to Italy’s own, very dull political scene—14 years of the very tired Berlusconi-Prodi show. It thus astonishes many Italians that when journalists, pundits and citizens ask themselves whether the United States is ready for a black or a female president, the answer is really in play. By contrast, no one even imagines asking if Italy is ready for a different kind of leadership. Hopefully, the example provided by the United States will spur reform even in change-resistant Italian politics.
