It was thirty years ago that elections in the United Kingdom presaged an epochal change in American politics. After three decades of Labour hegemony presiding over the sloughing off of the British Empire and the near-collapse of the British economy, Margaret Thatcher’s Tories swept into office, and spent the next decade first saving, then reviving Britain, and finally leading it back to the head of Europe’s economy.
A year later, Reagan did the same for America.
This year, we’ve been faced with the vision of the French president Sarkozy chiding Obama on his risible Iran policy. Angela Merkel has extended the center-right lead in Germany. Berlusconi isn’t going anywhere just yet.
Has the left hit a high water mark in Europe?
Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to “irrational exuberance,” greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right’s failures.
German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II.
To this student of German and German history, the Sozialdemokraten‘s slow bleeding is wonderful to see.
Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer’s European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless.
Some American conservatives demonize President Obama’s fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism — but it is Europe’s right, not left, that is setting its political agenda.
Of course, as has been noted elsewhere, “conservative” has always meant something a little different in Europe:
Europe’s center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations.
Europe’s conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d’Études Politiques, “have adapted themselves to modernity.” When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany’s Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the “Anglo-Saxon model” of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said.
Which means European conservatives would be Blue Dogs by American standards, to be sure; it also means that the Euro left is even more insane than ours is.
Oh yeah – our left isn’t doing all that well either:
Though Democrats maintain an edge in party support over Republicans, Americans’ tendency to identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party is lessening, coming down from the heights it reached near the end of the Bush administration. The changes in party support have been mainly among those who do not have a firm party commitment — those who initially identify as independents but express a leaning toward either of the major parties.
In fact, Gallup has found that independents are more likely to oppose than support healthcare reform, and to express concerns about increased government spending and the expansion of government power. Thus, the drop in Democratic support is partly a response to concerns about the policies Obama and the Democratic Congress are pursuing.
I’m feeling better about 2010 every day.