Dang it

You win some, you lose some. Bush's porteur-d'eau (waterboy) in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy, got pasted pretty good in local elections, and Spain returned a Socialist government unlikely to be friendly to Bush, all last month.

Things seemed great, but now we end up with right-winger Silvio Berlusconi in power in Italy again after the latest elections. Berlusconi is on the right, and was a minor partner in Bush's Elektran Adventures in Iraq. Of course, "do you like Bush?" is way down on the list of priorities of most foreign voters. However, I don't like the idea of the minority of Americans currently in control of the government getting much support abroad. The less help they get firming up their fantasies, the better.

While Berlusconi was installed by an electorate uninspired by its choices, and disappointed in a leftist government that had fallen, I don't like seeing somebody so thoroughly corrupt in office in any country. He reminds me not a little of Boris Yeltsin minus the drinking problem.

On the positive side, this is Italy, which means the government may well be gone by the time the next president delivers his/her first State of the Union.