In an era dominated by carefully chosen sound bites and judicious spin, political leaders can come across as excessively buttoned-up. Perhaps Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi imagines he is breaking this political mold by regularly behaving in an outlandish manner. If so, he is sadly disillusioned. His conduct is all too often simply boorish.
This week he has excelled himself. On his very first meeting with President Barack Obama, he commented approvingly on the man’s “tan”. At the end of a photo call at Buckingham Palace, he outraged the British queen by bellowing several times to the US president. And yesterday at the NATO summit, he emerged from his limousine taking a mobile phone call, which he continued while German Chancellor Angela Merkel was waiting to greet him on the red carpet. In the end, quite understandably, Merkel gave up and stalked into the conference without him. Such behavior is not in the least bit amusing. His antics yesterday were downright bad manners. It is inconceivable that he could not have dealt with his call before he left his vehicle. Instead, deep in conversation, he wandered away to the bank of the Rhine, while the world’s media recorded every second of his rudeness. The deep embarrassment of his aides was clear from their faces.
His “tan” comments about Obama were even worse and meant that he had to try and defend his gaffe at a post-G-20 summit press conference. He had a pretty lame excuse. He said he could have commented on Obama’s height, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Premier Vladimir Putin, both short men, were close by, and he didn’t think it would be appropriate. Instead, he recalled an Italian song which said that to be beautiful, a person had to be tanned. It still seemed not to have struck the Italian leader that this was many times less appropriate. When a journalist pressed him on whether he was going to apologize for the remark, he dismissed the reporter as an imbecile, picked up his papers and walked out.
The problem is that this was clearly a racist comment and when it comes to racism, Berlusconi has form. In 2001 he caused widespread anger in the Muslim world when he asserted that Western civilization was clearly superior. The subsequent retractions and attempted explanations cut little ice. In his first term as premier, Berlusconi’s poor behavior produced the wry comment from Italian voters that it was “Just Silvio”. This week, however, there has been general outrage back home at his antics. For senior Italian diplomats, this has been matched by despair because this July, Berlusconi will be chairing a summit of the G-8 nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US — and he will have some fence-mending to do with Obama. The US president’s current view of the Italian leader can well be imagined.
The 72-year-old Berlusconi may believe that he cuts a “bella figura” — beautiful image — but the unfortunate truth is that many consider him to be utterly insensitive to others’ feelings.
Selling economic stimulus packages
This is from an editorial that appeared in Friday’s Los Angeles Times:
This week, President Obama found out how much harder it is to sell economic stimulus packages in Europe than it is in Washington.
Obama went to the Group of 20 summit in London hoping to persuade leaders of the world’s biggest economies to boost government spending to counteract the global downturn. Backed by Japan and Britain, the administration argued that restoring growth around the world required a stronger fiscal push from other developed nations. Besides, getting more money into the hands of foreign consumers would help them buy goods from the United States, just as the $787-billion stimulus package Congress passed in February should help buttress the demand for imported products here.
Echoing Obama’s Republican critics, though, some European leaders said their governments couldn’t afford to go more deeply into debt. The borrowing binge could prove counterproductive too, making it harder for businesses to obtain the capital they need to operate and expand. The G-20 settled on vaguely worded promises to keep trying to restore growth and to keep interest rates low. The most tangible commitment was a pledge to provide $1.1 trillion more in financial support, mainly for developing nations. Still, that funding — a portion of which will come from the US — could help this country’s economy by enabling poorer nations to buy more goods.
For all the discussion about regulation, the G-20’s agreement does not address some of the fundamental problems in the financial system, such as the incentives for companies to become too big and intertwined, and the failure to measure and adequately price risk. It will be up to lawmakers and regulators around the globe to address those issues individually, and that’s as it should be. Coordinating rules across borders makes sense, given the global nature of the financial industry, but a one-size-fits-all approach to regulating the vastly different financial systems in each country does not.
