The Mechanics of Democracy

[IDemo]

Despite America’s electoral debacle of 2000, Bush still passes judgment on everyone else’s vote. Isn’t it time to lead by example?

WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 4:51 p.m. ET April 13, 2006

April 13, 2006 - Every time there’s a messy election somewhere, pundits drag Winston Churchill out of his grave to tell us, “Democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." But is that any excuse for the disappointments and debacles we’ve seen so far this 21st century? The list is long and depressing, starting with the electoral farce in the United States that first brought George W. Bush to power by way of a Supreme Court decision in 2000. And the cause of freedom is hardly helped by the way the Bush administration now passes judgment on the democratic experience and experiments of everyone else in the world.

In the Middle East last year, Washington waxed ecstatic about electoral exercises in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian Territories—until the results came in. It’s still trying to dictate the shape of the new government in Baghdad. It’s upset with the popular support for Hizbullah in Lebanon. It was appalled at the gains of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and simply stunned by the victory of Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. (Oh, and let’s not forget that Iran’s incendiary President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won his office through universal suffrage.) Meanwhile, Latin Americans keep voting for presidents whose main message is, or seems to be, “Yanqui go home.”

This week, it’s Italy’s turn. After a tawdry campaign pitting the center-left’s soporifically serious challenger, Romano Prodi, against the calculated buffoonery of the incumbent prime minister, billionaire media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, the result was a dead heat likely to bring paralyzing uncertainty and instability for months if not years to come. Prodi says he’s won, and the official count backs him up. But his majority in both houses of Parliament is thinner then a sliver of prosciutto. Berlusconi is refusing to concede defeat and is demanding a recount. Reminded of the mess in the United States in 2000, the respected Italian daily Corriere della Sera declared, “Ohmygod! It’s Florida!”

Indeed. European governments have accepted the official results in Italy as ... official. They’ve congratulated Prodi. But the Bush administration is withholding its blessing until Berlusconi finishes dragging the process through the courts. "We are not going to give any comment on the results until everything is official," says White House spokesman Scott McClellan . Maybe in Washington that sounds prudent and balanced, but in Rome it sounds like partisan American politicking. Berlusconi is Bush’s buddy and this appears to be yet another effort by Washington to deny frustrating facts about the way elections pan out in other peoples’ countries.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12304990/site/newsweek/