FRASCATI, Italy — I spent the Republican convention in Madrid, and half of the Democratic convention in the picturesque suburb of Rome. That is rare; as a political junkie, I have been glued to the TV during both conventions going back half a century, and I don’t spend my whole life in Europe.
This time, family obligations and work brought me to the Mediterranean in summer, and I had to watch the proceedings at odd hours and even catch glimpses on the local news. Poor me.
But these experiences made one thing crystal clear: American politics are as much front-page news in Europe as they are in Peoria. Our allies are sometimes, perhaps, even too involved. I remember a relative of my wife’s telling me in Scotland years ago that Europeans deserved to vote in American elections, seeing how much they are affected by whom we choose as leader.
Sorry, Charlie. No.
Another thing my time in Europe made clear: Its press is as much in Kamala Harris’s corner as the press in the United States is.
Not only are European journalists cut from the same left-wing cloth as their American brethren, but even those who strive to be fair read what the New York Times and the Washington Post write, and they watch our networks. And the impression they get from those sources is reality to them.
So they sell here the same myth about President Joe Biden — that he made an immense sacrifice and, “for the good of the country,” agreed to pass the baton to Harris.
The truth, of course, is that up to the moment he was almost certainly forced to send out an unsigned letter saying he was stepping down, Biden was insisting he would remain in the race. He only agreed to step aside when party barons and especially one baroness called him and threatened him to leave or else.
So, to Italy’s Rai News, reporting before Biden’s speech, he “will receive a chorus of applause from the Democrat delegates elected in his name.” The news service quoted Chairman Jaime Harrison as saying, “We thank the leader for 50 years of selfless leadership. He is a president who has always been with us and, by God, has always fought for us.”
The opening day, it said, had a “roster of speakers highlighting how Biden and Harris have put the interests of the United States, above their own, in contrast to what they see as self-centered management of the former president and Republican candidate Trump.”
Italy’s communists, for their part, wasted no time welcoming the new arrangement of the Democratic Party. Il Manifesto — the aptly named communist party organ — called the second day of the convention, “the day of the adults.” That was because, once Biden was finally out of the way, the stars of the global Left would then take center stage.
“Bernie Sanders, Michelle and Barack Obama take the stage to tell the thousands of galvanized and happy Democrats that everything is very good, but there is still a long way to go,” said Il Manifesto. “And it’s not enough to win these elections, you have to win by a landslide. Both because this way one cannot claim fraud, and because without having a majority in Congress, the path to real reforms is blocked.”
But Europeans are no more convinced than Americans are that what the media reports reflects the truth on the ground. I do run in conservative circles, so perhaps I am not the best at reporting popular feelings. It is true that Donald Trump arouses strong opinions over here as much as he does at home, but the people I was with, both government leaders and politicos, media types, and, more importantly, everyday Italians and Spaniards, were not convinced that Harris-Biden would be best for them. Many of them actively liked Trump.
In fact, America’s decline would worry most of the Europeans I encountered — though some political leaders, charged with looking after the interests of the people who have elected them, do have to make preparations in case the United States suddenly ceases to be the world’s top power.
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They are not blind to the fact that Vladimir Putin has invaded Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, even if he remains bogged down there three years later when he expected to take Kyiv in three weeks. Nor are they unaware of the fact that China, under Xi Jinping’s aggressive policy, is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea.
Of course, to the people who write the editorials in Il Manifesto and call Sanders and the two Obamas “the adults,” a victory by Putin or Xi, and more importantly, a U.S. defeat, would be sweet news. But they are as representative of Europe as Saturday Night Life’s Kenan Thompson is of the United States. Europeans should be skeptical.
Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and the co-author of “NextGen Marxism.” Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.
