Empire of the Son

FLORENCE ? It wasn't until I heard Susan George begin to foam at the mouth that I realized how happy I was with the recent election results. Ms. George is a frosty left-wing economist who was speaking last Thursday at the anti-globalist European Social Forum here in Florence. Her specialty seems to be international exchange (in the balance-of-payments sense, as opposed to the junior-year-abroad sense). She's one of the leaders of ATTAC, a European group that wants large enterprises to pay a small levy on currency swaps, which is supposed to prevent currency speculation. But that didn't stop her from denouncing the midterm results as a military menace to humanity. "The world has changed since Tuesday," Ms. George warned. With both houses of Congress and the White House, Republicans now have a green light to pursue "a new worldwide empire." Bush, she said, "has people around him who have been dreaming of this for years... Iraq will be only the beginning." Her implication was that Europe, too, would soon be in America's sights.

As we go to press, there's no sign of any American troops here in Florence. What really struck me was Ms. George's confidence in stating this. She may be American herself?she has one of those almost-to-England accents. I can't spend 24 hours in Europe without feeling totally out of touch with what's going on in America. Any American would have been grateful to hear someone talk about the election. It's a great myth that Europeans know (or care) so much more about the United States than we know (or care) about Europe. What nice people we are to suck up insults like, "You Americans are so stupid...you don't even know the capital of Denmark," without replying: "Well, gee, Denmark is about a fifth the size of California, and considerably less important to the world politically, culturally, economically...so what's the capital of California?"

While I can't agree with Ms. George that Bush's midterm triumph is the 21st-century equivalent of the March on Rome, no one can deny it was an historic triumph for a midterm. The person who found the best way of expressing the scale of the win was Steve Sailer of UPI. Sailer noted that if you took the total Republican and Democratic votes, excluding third parties, you get astonishingly wide margins.

? Republicans took 52.8 percent of all the votes for governor, versus 47.2 percent for the Dems.

? In the Senate, it was 52.2 for Republicans versus 47.8 for Democrats.

? And in the House, which provides the only nationwide vote, it was Republicans 53.4 to Democrats 46.6. Seven points on the generic ballot is an astonishingly wide gap, and it's up from 1.2 points in 2000. (And considering that, two years ago, Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader brought the hard left to the polls, where they presumably voted Democratic for Congress, these numbers, if anything, understate the Republican win.)

Incoming!

There are some interesting changes coming in the Democratic Party. For one, DNC chair Terry McAuliffe will be asked to enhance the moral luster of that organization by finding other employment. His departure will be bad news for Hillary Clinton. It's a symbolic setback, since if there is one person in the entire Democratic Party apparatus who owes his political existence to the Clintonites, it is he. But it's a practical setback, too, since Hillary can't be happy about seeing the money part of the Democratic Party apparatus unhitched from her personal caravan.

But that's about as far as the bad news goes for your junior senator. The entire configuration of Democratic politics just now is as favorable as it will ever be to a novice (which is what Hillary is) running for president, and the advisers who are urging Hillary to wait until 2008 to run for president are probably wrong. Yes, Bush is popular, and looks hard to beat?but the successful presidential candidates are those (like Hillary's husband in 1991) who declare their intentions regardless of the poll numbers and trust luck to carry them through. The unsuccessful ones are those (like Jack Kemp) who are paralyzed until they're 90 percent sure they will win the presidency if they seek the nomination.

Only a massive change of subject could rescue Hillary from her biggest problem, which is Iraq. But such a change of subject is within the realm of possibility. One can already see the sources of Republican hubris that could harm the GOP in 2004. It may seem crystal-clear to you and me that voters have decided Islamist extremism is a real threat, and are satisfied with Bush's approach to dealing with it?in Afghanistan, Iraq and at home. But the corporate consultants and think-tank ideologues who steer the Republican Party probably view this election win as a mandate (or pretend to view it as a mandate) for a range of gimcrack programs from tort reform to corporate tax simplification to hospital vouchers.

No Democrat will want to run if the war goes successfully. But even if the war goes badly, it is far from clear that Hillary would be able to take an antiwar position without sounding unpatriotic. There are some solid Democratic misgivings about her, and they're the same ones Republicans had about Colin Powell. Both are people with enviable name identification and thus a ready-made base. But like Powell, Hillary has never been through the political wringer?she was insulated from scrutiny in her Senate race against Rick Lazio in 2000 by press prudery over Monica Lewinsky?and thus stands a good chance of getting chopped to ribbons on the campaign trail. Still, she is exactly the combination of familiarity and surprise that the desperate Dems will be increasingly inclined to lunge for.

Odd Couples

Last week I was sitting at dinner in a restaurant on Via Guelfa in Florence when I picked up a conversation from the next table that was so boring it was interesting. It was a foursome, an American couple and an Italian couple. The Italian man was observing that, whereas Europeans play soccer, Americans play football.

"Yes," the American woman jumped in, "and isn't it funny that we call it football and you call it football?"

My first thought was, Oh, jeez. But then I realized their conversational impasse was evidence not of the couples' stupidity but of their incompatibility. They were probably good people caught with nothing to talk about. But the American husband, as it turned out, had a different nervous tic from the other three. He had the tic where you do anything to fill up the silence. So he started explaining what the 15 top bowl games were, when they were played, which were the easiest to get tickets to, how the bowls now took place over the course of a week or more, rather than on New Year's Day, the Midwest/West Coast rivalries that until recently marked the Rose Bowl...and on and on. All of great interest to an Italian dentist or butcher or garage mechanic.

I've been in this position a hundred times, and could almost write out, step-by-step, how it happened. Johnny McYankee tells his law partner Guido Immigranti that he and the little lady are making their first visit to Florence. Guido says, "I'm from Florence!" and insists that Johnny look up his second cousin Carlo Seccatore. But maybe Guido has forgotten that Carlo always hated him when they were growing up. Or maybe Johnny has made the bizarre decision to visit a city that he has absolutely no interest in.

I wondered, from a table away, what their conversation would be if either side picked up the other's thread and tried to turn it into a real conversation among friends:

"So how is Guido? He was always the smartest boy in the school when we were growing up in Firenze." (Well, he must have changed.)

"So... Well... You sure eat a lot of pasta here in Italy..." (Too much! Don't you see how fat my wife is?)

"Emm... Do you mind the jetlag when you fly?" (Oh, heavens, no. We Americans consider jetlag better than sex!)

Maybe they were wondering the same thing. Anyway, there they all were, sitting over (1) a lovely cauliflower soup with truffles in it, (2) a lombatina di vitello that looked so good I ordered it myself and (3) a third bottle of wine, in a romantic restaurant in a beautiful corner of Florence...and all of them looked as if they'd rather be anywhere in the world but here.