AFP Photo/Jewel Samad
Last week, President Obama, speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, paraded his doctrine of American Exceptionalism before the world — at least half of which seemed prepared to accept it. At midnight, the government of his nation shut down, to the utter bewilderment of many of the same people abroad who were so inclined to embrace the U.S.’s alleged uniqueness just a week ago.
Come to think of it, the U.S. is unique in that respect: how many governments — unwilling or unable to come to grips with key issues or balance their budgets — opt simply to pack up their bureaucracies and go home? Such cutting and running does not provide the shining example to the world Mr. Obama seemed set on selling. The French woke up Tuesday morning to a headline in Le Monde, blaring “Jefferson, wake up, they’re crazy!” That’s the general tenor of commentary around the world — disbelief layered on disappointment. Le Monde’s editorial board captured these sentiments perfectly. “Once upon a time, there was a Republic which knew how to transcend diverse ideologies,” the paper began after raising in the headline the name of Thomas Jefferson — for most Frenchmen still the quintessential American democrat. “It was government largely from the center,” Le Monde continued, “that magical location, master of the political art that could produce the most intelligent and, often, the most noble [results]: reform by compromise…[between] the two great formations of this nation, republicans and democrats. Thus was accomplished the most very important outcomes: the New Deal, struggles against the great totalitarianisms of the 20th century, civil rights laws, the conquest of space . . . the Old Continent looking on with envy at the suppleness of the American political system.”
No longer. The Old Continent (read that Europe) has managed to assemble itself into a single economic and political union, united along many of the same axes that now divide the U.S. It has a single currency — the Euro accepted from the westernmost fringe of Ireland to the eastern border of Latvia. Travelers can pass freely across the entire continent without ever once showing their passports.
Yes, Europe may still not be able to speak with a single voice when it comes to confronting external tyrants like Syria’s Basher al-Assad. And it still plays host to nation-on-nation friction. French President François Hollande must make nice to his German counterpart, the newly-reelected Chancellor Angela Merkel. Italy has proved no paragon of virtue when it comes to chaotic political systems — the nine year reign of Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister, punctuated by charges of corruption and ultimately a conviction for tax fraud. Yet he still manages to insist that he will remain as leader of his revived Forza Italia party, even if the Italian Senate votes to expel him. It should be noted, though, that when push comes to shove, in the interests of staving off an American-style political crisis, some 40 members of his party said they’d desert their leader and back his opponent, Prime Minister Enrico Letta.
Of course France does have its own Tea Party — the far-right Front Nationale and its potent leader, Marine LePen, daughter and heiress of its founder, Jean-Marie LePen. But even with its most extreme pronouncements, its threats and bizarre syllogisms, neither the FN nor any of the other often fractured parties that comprise the Assemblée Nationale, has been able to shut down the French government.
Where once there was a panoply of such national systems, now there is the overlay of the European Union’s pan-continental system. It is all but inconceivable that any constituent government would close up shop and go home merely because of some parliamentary squabble. The omnipotent, omniscient bureaucracies, whose styles were established by Napoleon but with a bloodline that goes back to the earliest European kings, will survive — as one veteran French politico once suggested to me — even a nuclear bomb. After which, there will be only two species left on the planet. Cockroaches and bureaucrats.
David A. Andelman is the Editor of World Policy Journal. Previously he served as Executive Editor of Forbes. Earlier, he was a domestic and foreign correspondent for The New York Times in various posts in New York and Washington, as Southeast Asia bureau chief, based in Bangkok, then East European bureau chief, based in Belgrade. He then moved to CBS News where he served for seven years as Paris correspondent, traveling through and reporting from more than 70 countries. He is the author of three books, most recently A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today. Twitter: @DavidAndelman
