Election? What election?

In Italian, a ballot box is an urna, and November 2 is the Day of the Dead.

My partner Susan Straub, our baby Mirella and I left Bend on October 2 for a three month visit to Italy. A surprising number of people asked us if were were leaving the U.S. for an extended visit to Italy to avoid the election. The answer is no. The election was unavoidable in a country as media-saturated as Italy, but being here certainly put the process in a fresh light.

For days before the election Corriere della Sera, the nationally daily newspaper that I read (or try to) to improve my halting Italian, ran stories on the campaign. These were very much like pieces in major dailies in the U.S. The pieces seemed balanced to me. This is significant because most of the Italian media, especially TV, is owned by Silvio Berlusconi, the controversial yet wildly popular Prime Minister. I learned the Italian for a number of interesting terms from these stories; poll, swing states, Electoral College, neck-and-neck.

We don’t have a TV in our simple apartment. I saw a few minutes of pre-election coverage on Fox and CNN while visiting our friends Becky and Gino Isla. I watch TV a lot at home, I’m not a snob, but I can’t say I missed watching Wolf Blitzer prattle on and on about exit polling in upstate New Hampshire while striding in front of his bank of 50 separate TV monitors. The fact is that real-time election coverage is very, very boring until the moment that a network “declares” the winner. None of us knows, nor care, that the precincts that report first in North Carolina are largely republican rural areas.

About 60 million people, a fifth of the U.S. population, live in an area about three fourths the size of California. People here are certainly more interested in and aware of America’s political process than vice versa. America has been the world’s superpower since the end of the Second World War. We have large military bases here (I was stationed at a small one in southern Italy in 1968-1970). Most of the Kosovo War against Serbia was prosecuted from NATO airfields in Italy. Italy is a member of our coalition in Iraq (to the tune of several hundred soldiers) and has lost people there. Italy has a big problem with a stale economy, with unemployment, with illegal immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa. After the War Italy underwent almost thirty years of deadly domestic political terrorism.

My friend Ezio Paroni graciously allowed me to pick his brain about the U.S. election. Ezio is hardly a random choice. A banker, he lived in Manhattan for ten years and raised two daughters there. He has traveled extensively in the U.S. for business and pleasure, and keeps in constant touch through the Internet and weekly news magazines. He is a self-avowed big fan of the U.S., and a very interested observer. He describes his politics as “Center Right.” He also spent five years in Egypt, which gives him a solid perspective on the conflict within and with the Muslim world.

According to Ezio, while America is a great country with a great role to play in world affairs, this President Bush comes across to Italians and other Europeans as a bully who is neither aware of nor particular concerned about the opinion of the citizens any other country. “For me, it was about oil from the beginning”, he says. In his view, the average American has very limited knowledge of history, politics, how things really work in the world. This is, he believes, and I believe, very dangerous.

He is a practicing Catholic. Even so, he thinks most Italians would agree that the “moral” issues (gay marriage a prominent example) that played such an important role in this election should be dealt with in the home, not in political process.

It is no accident that Machiavelli was an Italian. Many Italians expect politicians to be self-serving, duplicitous, often corrupt. The delicious irony of Berlusconi’s famous quote was not lost on him: “I do not interfere with the operation of those TV stations that I control.”

To Ezio at least the average American voter seems a little naïve. He thought the 2000 election put the American political system in a very bad light. “Here you are, purporting to be a beacon of democracy for the rest of the world, and that’s how you elect a president?” I would characterize my new friend as an optimist, a fan of America, who hopes for the best and is more than a little concerned for us and, by extension, for the rest of the world.

In my experience Italians are very courteous. Since we arrived a month ago several people have mentioned to me, very respectfully, that a number of people in the world do not approve of our policies in Iraq and elsewhere.

The day before the election, Corriere ran a cartoon of Bush and Kerry flipping a coin, under the title “The Future of the World.” Another paper’s take: the world holds its breath. I chatted with friends in Bend. People (most of my circle are liberal) were very cautiously optimistic.

The East Coast polls closed at 2 a.m. Italy time. I intentionally did not check the web on Election Day morning, hoping to learn the results from Corriere. Of course the results were not yet conclusive at press time, although the early exit polling encouraged Kerry supporters. I next trudged over to the coffee bar/pastry shop, conveniently located in my apartment building. The people working there – I’ve become a very regular customer - had not heard who won (nobody had at that point). Several people asked whether we had voted at all (we had, successfully navigating the Italian postal system and the search for a Number 2 pencil). They asked whom I voted for. When I mentioned that my demographic (50+, white male, day job) was very pro-Bush although I was pro-Kerry, one of the woman said “Men are for Bush. It’s the women who will decide this election.”

I checked the web frequently during the day. The New York Times site seemed to me to be rather wistfully prolonging the inevitable. Gino told me that CNN had declared Bush’s victory long before the Times. A native Ohioan, I was bemused that this smallish, unpretentious state would, as advertised, turn out to be the hinge of this election.

Tonight, the evening after the Day of the Dead, in the historical “pedestrian area” of Varese, people were walking their dogs, window shopping, smiling at babies, living their lives. I’ll read my paper tomorrow morning and probably learn new words for humility, graciousness, and mandate. I expect that the politically commentary of the people who work at the coffee shop will be a shake of the head, a shrug, and a friendly “what can I get you?”