Americans accept the situation calmly, wrote Barbara Spinelli, a leading commentator in the Turin paper La Stampa. Their economy is doing very well, seemingly on auto pilot, and their institutions have strong roots. "It's the rest of the world that is watching with bated breath," she went on. "Here is the great, the only power still in existence at the end of the Cold War. Here is the nation that many regard as indispensable – and it's behaving like a teenage girl who can't make up her mind."
The world, Spinelli wrote, "can't organize itself, or live, or stay peaceful without its tutor-master settled in the White House." An editorial in El Pais, the Spanish daily, said it was important that the United States made sure no doubt lingered over the final count. "For the 43rd President of the United States to begin his mandate with doubts over whether he was really the winner would cast doubts on the legitimacy of his presidency," El Pais said.
For Nicole Bacharan, writing in the weekend edition of Le Monde, talk of a crisis in the United States was justified, but what kind of crisis? It was not in American society. "In spite of appearances, the population is not split down the middle," she wrote. Bush and Gore had run simple campaigns based on issues that created consensus (health care, education, Social Security), avoiding the problems that stirred an emotional response.
"Coca-Bush and Pepsi-Gore sought the smallest common denominator," Bacharan wrote, "and delivered a message that was politics "light," lacking color, and ideology."
Copyright 2000 by United Press International. All rights reserved.
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