Is the bloom off the rose already for the incoming Obama administration? Or are people getting a peek at the bugs under the rock that inhabit politics, not just in Chicago, but throughout the world and throughout history. Obama is the product not necessarily of the Chicago political machine but of the political machinations and alliances that go into any run for public office—particularly for the highest office in the land.
Has he handled his first test under fire with grace and his vaunted cool? Don’t know. He gave boilerplate answers at first—Don’t know all the facts. And then he was reminded to show proper outrage—I am appalled. And then he marshaled the awesome Obama political machine to get all the facts out and he held a formal press conference to say—that he couldn’t say anything right now, but his team was busily researching all the possible connections with the disgraced governor of Illinois and all the facts would come out in detail. Except U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald then told the Obama team not to bring all the facts out right now, pending further progress of his investigation. And so the story lumbers on and the mystery deepens, and the spanking-new Obama administration continues to be saddled with this albatross. His appointments have now become a sideshow for the press, which smells blood, and pursues further inquiry into this sordid story. It’s a sad deflation after the promise of change and the excitement of seeing a brand-new administration get a fresh start on the monumental problems of our world right now. Suddenly, everything new seems old again.
Americans have gotten only a fleeting glimpse of the turmoil that erupted in Greece recently and didn’t seem to fathom the extent of the violence there. Hundreds of buildings were torched, hundreds of shops destroyed in Athens alone (and the violence had spread to Crete and Corfu), more than 70 people were injured and the protests had spread to the rest of the European Union. Labor unions in Greece were threatening to paralyze the country and the conservative government was struggling to stave off calls for its resignation by the socialist opposition.
Things have calmed down since and the typical Greek in the street has resumed his accustomed cynicism about politics in general by blaming both the government and the loyal opposition for using the situation to further their own interests. Things will calm down and the demonstrations peter out over the next few weeks, one political analyst has suggested. But he added, ominously, that it might take “a generation or two” to straighten things out in Greece. The schism is borne out by some of the newspaper polls in the last few days: in one poll, 62 percent of those questioned said the riots were inexcusable. And yet 60 percent said they considered them a legitimate social uprising…Stay tuned.
Dimitri C. Michalakis
