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Jewish World Review Nov. 14, 2000 / 16 Mar-Cheshvan 5761
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Europe worries
as U.S. re-counts
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THE BRITISH PRESS gleefully calls it "bedlam in
the blue-rinse state" and France's favorite
TV satire show is regaling Gaul with two
new puppets: a madly hee-hawing donkey and a
desperately dense elephant. Even Russia's
President Vladimir Putin couldn't resist tweaking
our nose; the leader of one of Europe's most
politically confused nations smilingly noted that with Russia's top
election official visiting the U.S., maybe Moscow could give
America some badly needed pointers.
Of course, ridiculing America — of which most of Europe is
profoundly envious — has been a favorite pastime ever since we
had the nerve to liberate the continent in 1944-45. But if Europeans
professed a belief before that we were crazy, they're now
convinced. "How can the country that invented the Internet and the
computer become embroiled in a banana republic-style election?"
asked one regular at the cafe where I take my morning coffee.
Europeans may choose to guffaw at our electoral dysfunction and
ignore the strength of our democracy that the crisis ultimately
represents. But the bottom line is that the rest of the world is really
far more concerned about the psychological vacuum created than it
is about anything else. "It's as though your parents were doing
something unparentlike," admitted one French friend. "You may
laugh nervously, but it makes you insecure."
In fact, this has been a presidential election whose possible outcome
has troubled non-Americans from the start. While Al Gore hardly
conjures the enthusiasm Bill Clinton does, Europeans, and to a large
degree, Asians, have been downright suspicious of George W.
Bush. Many see the Texas governor as a potentially less friendly
ally, a neoisolationist who would offer a far more unilateralist
approach than his predecessor. As one Quai d'Orsay official puts it,
"Monsieur Bush's White House would be far less willing to take
other countries' feelings and opinions into consideration."
Two issues that have set off alarm bells across Europe: the Bush
circle's suggestion that the U.S. pull out of NATO security
involvement in the former Yugoslavia, and Bush's support for
developing a U.S. missile shield, something most Europeans oppose.
Of course, eight years ago, the world worried about an
internationally unknown man from Arkansas. Now, Clinton is
admired worldwide. The best thing many Europeans and Asians
perceive in Gore is the promise of continuity in U.S. foreign and
financial policies.
Gore, for example, is seen as more than willing to continue the
Clinton tradition of helping to strengthen the European Union
politically, economically and militarily. He is also considered friendly
on ecological issues, a powerful force in Europe. Nor, for all the
international criticism of American market forces, is the
Clinton-Gore administration seen as insensitive to Europe and Asia's
worries about globalization.
Not so the Bush camp. "The Clinton people were amenable to
global deal-making," an anonymous Italian official is quoted as
saying. "These other people are Texas big business. One can
already draw the conclusions."
Yet the U.S. electoral turmoil may have done more to bring
Europeans and Americans together than it has to set them apart.
"For years, America was the well-oiled democracy, the one where
elections worked like fine clocks," says popular French writer
Marek Halter.
"We were the ones with voter fraud and unending party battles, the
ones where Green ecological parties caused political havoc. Now in
one fell swoop, we've seen your machine is not so different from
ours. Maybe America is a little more
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
JWR contributor and veteran journalist
Richard Z. Chesnoff is a senior correspondent at US News
And World Report and a columnist at the NY Daily News. His latest book is Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe
Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History.
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