On Sunday, I read an interview in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica with the governor of Puglia, a region in the South of Italy. His name is Nichi Vendola, and recently won elections on a landslide running as an anti-establishment guy. Vendola is brilliant, articulated, and he is a promise for the Italian center-left politics. Certainly, one of the very few new faces of Italian politics. And he is relatively young, compared to certain mummies that have been populating Italian politics. In the interview, Vendola portraited himself as the anti-establishment guy and as an outsider. Someone who can shake up and transform the fossilized political culture of Italy. And God knows how much Italy needs such a transformation!
Because of how he represents himself, someone in Italy calls Vendola the "white Obama." The first African-American president became something of a totem for Italian politicians on the left. During the Democrat convention in Denver, I had the opportunity to chat in the lobby of a hotel with Walter Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome, while he was waiting to take a photo-op with former president Bill Clinton. If Obama was going to win the elections, Veltroni told me, the political landscape in Italy would profoundly change and a real chance for the center-left to win elections would be presented. It sounded like the destiny of Italy, not just of America, depended on Obama's victory. At the time, Veltroni certainly did not imagine Obama declaring in an interview that Italians are lucky to have Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister!
Obama's honey moon was very short, and his popularity is sinking. Though he pushed for important reforms, Americans do not feel the effects yet, and are critical of his leadership. Mostly, Obama does not feel the pain of Americas. He is judged of lucking empathy, coming across as distant and cold. So, I was amused when I read that Vendola is pleased to be labeled the "white Obama." It's a brand that suites him. It also reflects a romanticized perception of the U.S. President, a lingering enchantment with his rhetoric of change, which is still surviving in Europe (and which influenced also the Peace Nobel Prize committee) but that is certainly buried - at least for now - in the United States. This gap of perception between America and Europe has often been there. When Americans embraced Bush, Europe repudiated him, and when Americans are turning a cold shoulder to Obama, Europeans acclaim him. Often Europe doesn't get America.
In one thing Vendola, or whoever is willing to take over the leadership of a sinking Italy, resembles Obama. In the stoic willingness to take over the stewardship of the Titanic after he hit the iceberg. But in order to really change the course of Italy, Vendola too needs to be willing to embrace the risk of becoming, like Obama is, the tragic hero of a German baroque drama who, because of the intrigues of others, faces with stoicism a sad destiny, one without redemption.
