ShareThisBy DOUG SAUNDERS
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
If you look at the front page of Tuesday's copy of Le Monde, France's most influential newspaper, you might think you were reading a broadsheet from Peoria, Ill.
It was actually a pretty big news day in Europe: More than five million people had gone the day without electricity, talks broke down over Turkey's European Union membership and France faced a number of political crises.
But Le Monde's front page, like much reporting in Europe this week, is devoted to a matter that usually escapes European notice.
A banner headline, stretched across the top of the front page, read "Bush Faces Menace of a Democratic Congress: The Midterm Elections Could Deprive the Republican President of the House and the Senate." Above was a full-width photo of the President stumping for a congressman, and below were five articles devoted to the vicissitudes of the Yankee vote.
Never in recent memory have Europeans been so devoted to the outcome of a midterm U.S. election. While presidential contests are watched with great interest, the fates of senators and representatives usually fly far below the radar of a continent that itself holds a major election almost every week.
But this one is different. It is, as Le Monde said in the editorial accompanying a thick special section this weekend devoted to the election, "a referendum for or against the policies of George W. Bush."
And if one thing unites Europeans these days, it is opposition to Bush. A major poll of European citizens taken earlier this year by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, a series of worldwide public opinion surveys, found that only 30 percent of Britons have any confidence that Bush will do the right thing in world affairs. That number falls to 25 percent for Germans, 15 percent for French citizens and 7 percent for Spaniards.
By comparison, Tony Blair won the confidence of almost half of German and French citizens, and Russian President Vladimir Putin did slightly better than Bush.
European political leaders, and the media that follow them, have turned this week's midterms into a major topic of domestic policy.
In most cases, the message from both left-wing and conservative voices is straightforward: If the Republicans lose their control of all branches of government, it will be a lot easier for the European view to prevail on the world stage.
German and French commentators have expressed hopes that a compromise-driven two-party government in Washington could lead to a more Euro-friendly approach to Middle East relations. And David Cameron, Britain's Tory Leader, has joined a number of European leaders in saying that a robust and lasting solution to the global warming crisis could be reached.
Still, it has not entirely been the policy implications that have sent unprecedented waves of reporters scurrying across the Atlantic. Live TV crews from Britain's BBC, Germany's Deutsche Welle and Italy's RAI have been sending lengthy reports several times a day on attack ads, dirty-book accusations, California gubernatorial races, intern-groping controversies and campaign-finance fiddles.
Italy's respected daily La Repubblica Monday offered a front-page headline that summarized the soap opera of U.S. sleaze that has delighted the country's viewers, enjoying a period of comparatively sleaze-free Italian politics: "The Politically Incorrect Midterm: Sex, Pedophilia and a Party Coming Apart at the Seams."
