Politics and hope

How to think about Italian politics?  This is prompted in part by two dispairing conversations about politics I had with Italians in the last coupld of days.   There's a sense in which you want to say, "where to begin?"

Berlusconi is still on the scene and his comments are usually major news items, this despite the fact that commentators are saying his time has passed.  Mario Monti and his government of technicians have earned respect from most Italians as well as European political leaders (and others) who used to laugh at Berlusconi behind his back.  But, in the face of restrictive budget and tax policies, it’s hard to find anyone predicting significant growth in the Italian economy any time soon.  And governmental polcies aside, the country’s arcane bureaucracy,  organized crime, and ineffective judicial system add their own drag on the economy, not to mention their discouraging effects on outside investment.

More than once I’ve heard an Italian parent say that he or she didn’t see much of a future for their children in the country.  In the face of all of this, is it still possible to hope things will get better?  The two people I talked to recently, if asked, might well have said no.  One said he’d stopped voting for a candidate any more.  He didn’t think any of the political parties or their leaders could or would do much to address the country's proplems.  At best, if he voted, he said, he’d vote for a candidate, not for change, but because he thought the others could make matters worse.

I’m not sure how I would feel about all this if I lived and voted here.  I do know that until last week’s election, I had tended to dispair about progressive change in the U.S.  And I suspect that feeling has had something to do with my interest in the politics of countries where I don’t have a stake -- that is France and Italy.  But as sentimental as it may sound, last week’s elections reminded me that there’s almost always reason to hope, and that it’s not always in vain.

It may be that, at a certain age, having learned enough about politics to lose the enthusiasms of ones’ first couple of  elections, voting for the least bad alternative is what voting amounts to.  The candidate you end up voting for doesn’t excite you the way he (or she) did when you were first able to vote.  You know too much about him.  But he’s less bad than all the others so you hold your nose and give him your support.  Isn’t that, in a way, what mature citizenship should be -- a sober, slightly cynical, somewhat ironic participation, but with an emphasis on “participation?”  And maybe that’s the answer to how to think about Italian politics.

----------- I was looking for something that might illustrate this note, but didn't find it.  Maybe we could imagine these two men aren't really talking about the bicycle, but have been absent-mindedly looking that way while they debate last Tuesday evening's televised debate in one of the party primaries.