18.10.09. Politics.
My president last week won the Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout the presidential election and during Barack Obama’s first months in office he has rallied Americans with his hopeful cry, and now the Norwegians, too, are on board. Some among his detractors and his supporters—and I, too—believe this award is undeserved or at least premature. Obama has experienced early success in “altering the political discourse” in D.C., but his administration is still largely in its pupal stage. The butterfly promises to be magnificent, however, and it is this hope to which we and the Nobel committee cling. Such a widespread display of trust and faith is no small thing in a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world where we expect results in one hundred days.
This prize took a bit longer than a hundred days, but it is a tremendous accomplishment for Obama and the United States. I am proud that Obama won because today America is at war in two countries and I fear the world has painted us as a bellicose nation. We are a bellicose nation. With this prize, though, comes recognition of our other face: one of democratic and humanistic ideals that can sometimes lead us into war, but, as articulated by Obama, can also pull us out of and take us beyond war. It is an ambitious prize as Obama’s is an ambitious presidency.
This prize also marks the American people. Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize after decades of humanitarian work, but he accepted it in the role of sterling citizen. Obama is our sitting president, our top representative, and there only because we put him there; all who voted for him have a stake in his presidency and deserve a share in the spoils. Even those who voted against him should feel a part of this commemoration. Obama is the president not of voting democrats but of every American citizen. His is a national victory.
Because I am abroad I am particularly sensitive to the world’s perception of the United States. On a daily basis I interact with Italians, French, English, Germans, and Belgians, and I don’t want them to think we’re all a bunch of dolts. The ripple effects of this award, then, are huge. If I may reverse the spin of our political sphere à la Superman and return to 2006-07, my first sojourn in Italy, you will see what I mean. At that time George Bush was in the Oval Office, and as Oliver Stone has aptly shown in W., Bush was an avid patriot and a genuine man, but deeply flawed and unfit to be president. I often fielded questions from Italians about my take on American politics. “Bush—che ne pensi?” they would ask. What do you think about it all? That they asked in the first place gave me hope—they had not written us off wholesale—and it demonstrated the Italians’ wisdom, or simply common sense: I was not George Bush, nor were three hundred million other Americans. Still, we had as a collective elected and re-elected Bush. We had to share the blame for his faulty administration.
Now we can share in our president’s success. The world is a-tilt as it always is—many people struggle to find work and their way, and banks with their own struggles must try to quell this nervous mass (“You're thinking of this place all wrong. … The money's not here. Your money's in Joe's house, and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin's house, and a hundred others…”). But the gears of our general motor are churning and grinding, and another good shove might jolt us into second and then third gear. In the middle of our lives we have found ourselves in a dark forest, but the trees are thinning and the light is burning through. We can still find our way out and do great things in our lifetimes. The Norwegians have faith in us; so should we.
This international recognition points to another significant recent change: doggone it, people like us. When I came to Italy before, I left my American flag jacket in my closet back home. I knew if things got too rough I might have to become the tried-and-true oot-and-aboot Canadian. (On this topic, there happens to be a Canada-brand clothing store in Pavia’s main piazza. As far as I can tell, Italians work there, there are no Canadians around, and nobody is walking about town in the store’s maple-leaf plaids and flannels. Perhaps the Italians got duped by all the Americans pretending to be Canadians and tapped a false market?) This time around I have brought my flag jacket and flag boxer shorts and am ready to display my patriotism in every situation. I am proud, abroad, to be an American.
Just how completely the tables have turned has surprised me. I get the same question as before—“Obama—che ne pensi?”—but my interviewers lean forward with eagerness rather than angst, excited to meet a real American who has cast a ballot for Barack Obama: Nobel Prize Winner. Here as well people harbor doubts about the merits of Obama’s dossier, but they love the man and are tickled to hop on his bandwagon and see where he can take us in the next three or seven years (or eleven—Bloomberg the Genteel will try to set an interesting precedent on Tuesday, November 3rd).
Another reason the Italians want to buy into American hope is that their political sphere is wobbling farther off its axis by the day. Their leader, Silvio Berlusconi il Cavaliere (the Knight), seems more concerned about his damsels than the affairs of his kingdom. And when he does seize the reins, it is to defend and consolidate his fiefdom. In non-metaphorical terms, scandals have arisen and continue to simmer over his having spent considerable time with escorts and aristocrats rather than senators and ambassadors (to which I have previously alluded), and he is under heavy criticism for using his media ties to restrict freedom of speech and of the press.
Let us take a look at his portfolio. In the 1970s Berlusconi founded Mediaset, now the country’s largest commercial broadcaster and still controlled in large part by Fininvest, a Berlusconi-family holding company (Fininvest also controls a prominent publishing house and a national news daily). In his role as prime minister Berlusconi holds influence over Rai, a three-channel public television network, which in tandem with Mediaset constitutes 87.5% of the market share. Thus recently when Swedish-Italian Erik Gandini completed Videocracy, a retrospective documentary on Mediaset’s thirty-year rise, not only Mediaset but Rai, too, refused to show it. (Berlusconi has in fact wielded the same selective censorship with regard to W., forbidding its screening at a film festival in Rome—perhaps fearing the audience’s inevitable transatlantic comparison). Finally, Rai has formed an alliance with Mediaset in the form of Tivùsat, and as a favor to its new partner it has refused to sell broadcasting rights to Sky Italia—a snub for which Rai now faces a 90-million-euro fine (as if there were not yet enough egos involved, Sky Italia is the mediterranean arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate). The bottom line? Freedom House, an organization which tracks freedom of the press throughout the world, has given Italy a score of 29 based upon the country’s legal, political, and economic environment—two points away from making Italy the only country in Western Europe to lose the designation of “free press.” Berlusconi’s entrepreneurial and governmental arms are strangling the country.
Many Italians are protesting in multitudes in piazzas across the country—a recent protest in Rome likely reached sextuple-digits—but they still find themselves in the awkward position of being under the heel of a man they elected and re-elected (and re-elected, a kind of piecemeal Bloomberg administration). They must bear the international scorn of their choice as we did ours, but with one big distinction: they are not the economic and military superpower that we are. If they continue much farther down the road that Berlusconi is taking them, they risk international indifference and irrelevance. The people and food and sights will always be great, but Italy might lose its place in the major leagues of international politics. As author José Saramago (a Nobel winner in his own right) has noted, “One will say that Il Cavaliere is not to be taken seriously. Yes, but the danger is that in the end the same might be said about those who elected him.” We in the United States have lived this truth, and for this above all I am happy to be able to latch myself to our rising star. May I continue to wear the Stars and Stripes proubly across my shoulders and bottom till term-limit we part.◊