Monti and the polls

I've mentioned that I'm trying to get a better sense of Italian politics, to the extent that's possible during a month's visit.  And as part of my Italian lessons I can justify buying a newspaper every day or so.  Luckily, I bought a copy of La Repubblica today and happened on a piece by Massimo Giannini, one of the paper's editors.  He was reviewing most of the first year of Mario Monti's government.

Giannini took off from from what he noted had been a dramatic difference in recent polls between support for Monti himself and for his policies.  Regarding Monti, a recent poll by the Ipsos organization reported that 54 percent of Italians judged him favorably.  Several other polls report similar numbers, although a couple were about 10 points lower.

By contrast, when the same polling organizations asked Italians about specific measures, somewhere  between half and two-thirds of them expressed disapproval.  I was struck by this since I've generally thought well of Monti and his government and what they seemed to be trying to do.  I suppose nothing rearranges preconceptions like getting closer to the subject.

Giannini thinks those critics of the "Monti Agenda" in the polls are justified (although I suspect their reasons might not be quite as well worked out as his).  Generally, he thinks the government's measures on things like pensions, anti-corruption, labor market flexibility, and several others, haven't gone far enough and too often may end up increasing the burden on those who can least bear it.

He does allow that some of this is not Monti's fault, at least not directly.  Despite  general support from the parties, on specific issues he has had to negotiate and assuage their objections to proposals details.  Also, Giannini finds some of Monti's ministers have not been the most adept, thereby complicating passage of the government's measures.  And along with this, he things that high-level professional administrators have not always been as creative with new policy ideas as the economic crisis would seem to require.

So what does this split in evaluating Monti on the one hand and his agenda on the other mean for Italian politics over the next few months as political leaders position themselves for next Spring's anticipated elections?  Honestly, I'm not sure I know yet.  It's one more thing I'll be following.

Update: Yesterday, I said that I didn't know what this divide in opinions might mean for current political maneuvering.  Today, I'd add the following: It may continue support for the idea the idea of a “Monti bis.”  Monti remains valuable for the credibility he would bring to any successor government.  At the same time, it probably gives the parties room to criticize his record and make their own proposals.  In a democratic election that’s not a bad thing.  The test will be, though, how the next government treats this government’s reforms.
Will they be extended or curtailed?

Meanwhile, Italians still believe in political posters:

  

  

Wash Day

This photography stuff gets to be a lot of work.  I found myself thinking something like this yesterday while we were visiting Assisi.  I found myself thinking that I wasn't seeing anything new, anything I hadn't seen earlier in the week.  Old stone buildings, narrow streets, shadows and light in churches and arcades; they seemed to be the same in Assisi as they were elsewhere.  So I looked for something else and ended up finding laundry.  Thursday became my wash day.  Also, I think that sometimes I may prefer visiting a place to absorb the history and art, just taking photos "for the record."  Walking around, concentrating only on making images, when there is so much in the streets and buildings that I'm ignoring, bothered me.  As our guide through the Basilica said, often the best camera is our eyes and brain, except, of course, that mine don't store images as well as iPhoto does.  Here are a few things from "wash day."

A note from Cannara

Since last Saturday, Lynda and I have been in Cannara, Umbria, as part of a week-long photography workshop.  A couple, professional photographers who live near us in Northwest Washington D.C. -- Frank von Riper and Judith Goodman -- are leading the group, which includes just six of us.  We're staying in a very nicely modernized old farm house, the "Fattoria del Gelso," which I'm guessing may have been the home for tenant farm families until sometime in the 1950s or 1960s.  Since Sunday, our van driver, a remarkable American woman whose driving is the least of her talents, has been taking us to picturesque -- literally -- towns nearby -- Bevagna, Montefalco, and today, Orvieto.  So far, our visits have incluced a few hours of taking pictures and nearly as much time around the table.  Both have been challenging.  I'll try to say more later about the workshop, but for the moment here are some examples of what I've been seeing.

Mount Subasio and the agricultural valley around Cannara

Fattoria del Gelso ("Mulberry Farmhouse") on the right at the end of the line of trees

 

A convertsation in Bevagna (near Cannara)

Antipasti in Montefalco

Lunch in Bevagna

A Montefalco wall

 

Seagull Century

Most of my focus yestereday was on the rear wheel of the bicycle in front of me.  The hundred miles of the Seagul Century goes by a lot quicker when you're in a pace line and yesterday that's where I was most of the time. 

The Seagull Century is a "show and go" ride organized by Salisbury University in Salisbury Marlyand and may be the flattest 100-mile bicycle ride in the U.S.  The organizers offer two different 100-mile routes; a few years ago the original route got too crowded with over 5,000 riders and they added a second.  There is also a shorter, 62-mile "metric century."  Riders start from the university campus in a mass of colorful jerseys and swirling bicycles funneled into the tunnel under Ocean Highway and formed into a long flowing line of cyclists off on their day's adventure.  The day is new, bodies are rested and feuled with last night's pasta, and there's lots of conversation in the peloton.  On a day with good weather like yesterday, the early October sunrise comes a little after 7 a.m.  There's mist hanging over some of the fields.

The day warmed up and the mist burned off pretty quickly, and the line of riders thinned out within an hour or so.  I rolled along nicely with a group of five or six to the second rest stop at about mile 45.  There were only two of us to the third stop at Assateague Island.  And I was on my own for most of the next 20 miles to the last stop and it wasn't fun.  But after stretching out on the grass and eating a bit, I was ready for the last portion, especially since it was only 16 miles.  Not too far down the road my last paceline of the day came by and I came in feeling really good.  Feeling much better than these guys.

I've done the ride now maybe eight or nine times, not every year becuse several years we've been away travelling.  But now that we have friends with a house in the area, who've given us pretty much a standing invitation, Lynda and I come more regularly.  It's now the default event for the Columbus Day weekend. 

Monti bis?

By most accounts, during Europe's on-going crisis over the euro, Italy's prime minister, Mario Monti, has been a key leader.  His voice has been one of the most forceful arguing against Chancellor Merkel and budget austerity, and arguing for collective responsibility and a strong Europe.  And domestically, he and his government seem to have made progress on several fronts where earlier governments did nothing.  The contrast with Italy's last prime minister couldn't be greater.  But Monti's term in office runs out next spring and Italy is supposed to have elections for a new government.  The problem is that leaders of the various political parties haven't yet decided firmly on a date for the elections or on a voting system to replace the current one, which is generally despised, among other reasons, for giving much too much power to these same party leaders.  In the face of much uncertainty about Italy's immediate political future, Monti recently said that, if asked and if it's really necessary, he would be willing continue in office. 

In a sense, all of the above is an introduction to a recent blog post by James Walston, which does an excellent job of summarizing the reaction from the party leaders to Monti's statement.  See here.  Will there be a "Monti bis," as it's being called?  Walston doesn't say.  My guess, for what it's worth, is that there will be.  In any case, it will be fun to follow this over the next few months.

Being Italian

What does it mean to be "Italian?"  I'd have thought this would be most debated by Italians themselves.  But it was also a question considered by an Italian journalist in the course of interviewing Italians living in New York City.  Maurizio Molinari, the U.S. correspondent for La Stampa, has written what looks like a interesting book.  I haven't read it yet, but I went to hear him talk about it last night at Georgetown University.  According to his overview, The Italians of New York, (available here) is based on interviews with three groups of Italians in the city: the descendents of immigrants arriving around the end of the 19th century; those who came after World War II; and those who have been coming since about the mid-1980s, who've come not as immigrants, but to work or go to school.  

Broadly speaking, he said, for the first group being Italian means holding on to food traditions; for the second it means trying to hold on to the language; and for the third, although he didn't put it quite this way, it seems to mean reconciling their experiences abroad with institutions in what is still their home country.  Interestingly, apart from the differences among the three groups, he suggested that all of them, with their hard work and success, indicate what Italians can do when freed from the constraints of living in Italy.  Maybe not entirely fair, but there it is.