Here is their headline on the Italian elections:
Economy Ailing, Frustrated Italy Picks Berlusconi
Well, it's nice to know why the Italians made such an obviously irrational choice as to put a "center-right" coalition back into power. I supposed those bitter Italians were clinging to this "idiosyncratic billionaire," thus allowing him to "snatch" back power.
But with a weak economy and frustration high that Italy has lost ground to the rest of Europe, it was unclear whether Italians voted for Mr. Berlusconi out of affection or, as many experts said, as the least bad choice after the nation weathered two years of inaction from the fractured center-left.
Still, Italy now returns to a singular sort of personal politics with Mr. Berlusconi as the unquestioned protagonist.
Rejecting the sober responsibility of the departing prime minister, Romano Prodi, Italians chose in a moment of national self-doubt a man whose dramas — the clowning and corruption scandals, his rocky relations with his wife and political partners, his growing hairline and ever browner hair — play out very much in public.
The "sober responsibility of the departing prime minister." This isn't a news story. It's venting.
So what has the New York Times so irritated? Well, it turns out that the bitter Italians are clinging to the idea of a less leftist political system, one more like the U.S.
But in some basic ways, the election signaled a decisive shift in a nation whose politics have been unstable because of the narrow interests of its many small parties. Mr. Veltroni, heading the new Democratic Party, the result of a merger of the two largest center-left parties, had refused to run with far-left parties, as Mr. Prodi had done.
As a result, the ANSA news agency reported that the number of parties in the lower house of Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, would drop to just 6 from 26. For the first time since World War II, there will be no one in Parliament representing the Communist Party, which has long played an important part in leftist politics here. Mr. Veltroni, in fact, started his political career as a Communist.
Experts on the left and the right said — and in some cases lamented — that the election had shown a shift toward a more American- or British-style system of two dominant middle-ground parties.
Well, now that is depressing. No wonder the Times is bitter.
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