<$BlogRSDUrl$>

My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-03-14

Ah, the Backbone of Europe

I am, as most of the blogosphere, a bit distressed by the defeat of the Aznar government in Spain. Clearly, the message is "No mas! No mas!"

However, I have little reason to think of this as anything approaching a trend. Polls put the Iraqi war at 90% unfavorable in Spain, yet the Socialists only won by a 42-36 margin. This factored in with the complete and transparent bungling of the early stages of the investigation in Spain, and I have a hard time seeing how this is a major event. A Socialist will rule a European country with a minor plurality of the vote in his favor. Could be England, with the exception of Tony Blair's grasp of the obvious.

What does bother me is that this will enbolden al-Qaeda. I have no doubt that they will read this as weakness of the West and continue to strike out and try to influence other elections.

I'm just waiting to see if John Kerry lays claim to this election as evidence of a. the correctness of his position or b. his prescience (given his claim that "world leaders support him"--surely, the Zapateca prefers Kerry to Bush).
Posted by: Michael / 3/14/2004 10:50:00 PM

Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?