A quick note on Italian politics.

Yesterday the Italian Parliament voted against their Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s request for a vote of confidence, meaning he’s out and they need to find a new Prime Minister. As an American with a very strict idea of when and how elections are held it is difficult to wrap my head around this idea of political disorganization (during the hearing one Senator while making his statements was spit on by another Senator, then fainted and needed to be carried out of the building on a stretcher). On the one hand it seems much more democratic to be able to express dissatisfaction with your elected officials when you feel like it. At the same time however, Italians have been through this revolving door before: this is Prodi’s second time being voted out of his position, and the only viable option as his predecessor under Italy’s current electoral system is to go to the party leader of the opposition party Silvio Berlusconi, who has also already been voted out of office twice as Prime Minister.
Living here for me definitely sheds light on our own political system, sure the possible Bush-Bush-Clinton-Clinton-Bush-Bush-Clinton Presidential succession might resemble more of a monarchy than a democracy, and our current President would have been voted out of office years ago under Italy’s system, but at least with ours there is the possibility of an actual change by the time our elections do roll around.
It’s depressing to think that even a strong-willed woman like Luciana who consistently has called both Prodi and Berlusconi an entire array of Italian curse words, is now backing Berlusconi’s return. She explained it to me like this: No, I don’t like him, but Prodi hasn’t done anything with our tax money for the last 20 months, Berlusconi may be an idiot, but he has enough money that he won’t pocket ours. Doing something is better than doing nothing, she said.

Here is a link to an article I really enjoyed about Italy recently done by the New York Times that I think aptly observes Italy’s possibly fatal political and social problems.