Roger Cohen is in Brussels. He says that for more than a half-year Belgium has been unable to form a government because its citizens can’t decide what the state is for. Mr. Krugman says there are large differences among the serious contenders for the Democratic nomination in their beliefs about what it will take to turn a progressive agenda into reality. Here’s Mr. Cohen:
Belgium’s favorite Surrealist son, René Magritte, is famous for his painting of an apple on which he wrote: “This is not an apple.” He did the same for a pipe. Today he might aptly produce a rendering of his native land and inscribe on it: “This is not a country.”
It looks like a prosperous one, with its lace and chocolate stores, and beautiful Bruges, and its glassy sprawl of European Union institutions, and its very own tennis champion, Justine Henin. But for more than a half-year Belgium has been unable to form a government because its 10.4 million citizens can’t decide what the state is for.
In their grumpy way, Belgians — a majority Dutch-speaking, many French-speaking and a few German-speaking — have been posing a delicate question: does postmodern Europe, where even tiny states feel secure, really need a medium-small nation cobbled together in 1830 whose various communities dislike one another?
Moreover, does a country whose economy is largely run by European central bankers in control of the euro really need a government?
Gerrit Six, a teacher, suggested Belgian obsolescence when he put the country, complete with its busy king and ballooning debt, up for sale on eBay. It drew bids of close to $15 million. That was on day 100 of the political crisis. Belgium is now close to day 200. Italian politics suddenly look stable.
Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.
Forming a government against this backdrop of federalism run amok has proved beyond the powers of good King Albert and an outgoing prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who has redefined “outgoing” by staying. Magritte would have painted him and noted: this is not a departing leader. Surrealism is having a Belgian field day.
In the French-language daily Le Soir, Olivier Mouton opined last week that “On every front, we shoot, detest and accuse each other.” Yet the streets have been quiet since the elections back on June 10. The hour of hyperbole has sounded.
Behind it lurks the fact that Flanders wants its day. Dutch-speakers, long underdogs in a country without a Flemish university until 1922, are tired of subsidizing their now poorer French-speaking cousins. A successful anti-immigrant and separatist party, Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), is the odious expression of a wider desire to go it alone.
Flemish demands for greater decentralization and control (most recently over French-speaking schools in the Brussels periphery) have raised distrust to a poisonous level. “I am pretty sure Belgium will split eventually,” Caroline Sagesser, a political scientist, told me.
If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.
The 27-nation Union has banished war from the Continent and marginalized danger. Belgium fissures even as E.U. leaders sign the Treaty of Lisbon that will ultimately yield an E.U. president who can run things for up to five years (and so become identifiable), a foreign minister and a workable decision-making process. E.U. security makes Belgian instability harmless.
“The best position today is to be a small country within a large economic entity and trading area,” Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister told me. “That’s why we want an independent Scotland within the E.U.”
Flanders? Scotland? Brussels as Singapore-like city state? Wallonia? Kosovo? The map of Europe is not fixed. But I suspect its overall stability is. I am attached to Belgium — two of my children were born here — and I’d favor its preservation, but I can’t say it’s necessary within an overarching E.U.
As for a Belgian government, it would be nice to have one, but not essential. There’s no Belgian franc to go wobbly. There’s no monetary policy to set. There’s scarcely a country to govern, given how far European integration on the one hand and national devolution on the other have gone.
This is the 21st-century world the United States will face: a mysterious Europe with a more identifiable phone number living its postmodern version of paradise as its nation states get less meaningful or dissolve; and a rising Russia and China hurtling the other way, toward 19th-century-style nationalism, militarism and assertiveness.
Such dissonance will require American flexibility and imagination, enough to understand that the essence of the Belgian crisis is: this is not a crisis.
Here’s Mr. Krugman:
Broadly speaking, the serious contenders for the Democratic nomination are offering similar policy proposals — the dispute over health care mandates notwithstanding. But there are large differences among the candidates in their beliefs about what it will take to turn a progressive agenda into reality.
At one extreme, Barack Obama insists that the problem with America is that our politics are so “bitter and partisan,” and insists that he can get things done by ushering in a “different kind of politics.”
At the opposite extreme, John Edwards blames the power of the wealthy and corporate interests for our problems, and says, in effect, that America needs another F.D.R. — a polarizing figure, the object of much hatred from the right, who nonetheless succeeded in making big changes.
Over the last few days Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards have been conducting a long-range argument over health care that gets right to this issue. And I have to say that Mr. Obama comes off looking, well, naïve.
The argument began during the Democratic debate, when the moderator — Carolyn Washburn, the editor of The Des Moines Register — suggested that Mr. Edwards shouldn’t be so harsh on the wealthy and special interests, because “the same groups are often responsible for getting things done in Washington.”
Mr. Edwards replied, “Some people argue that we’re going to sit at a table with these people and they’re going to voluntarily give their power away. I think it is a complete fantasy; it will never happen.”
This was pretty clearly a swipe at Mr. Obama, who has repeatedly said that health reform should be negotiated at a “big table” that would include insurance companies and drug companies.
On Saturday Mr. Obama responded, this time criticizing Mr. Edwards by name. He declared that “We want to reduce the power of drug companies and insurance companies and so forth, but the notion that they will have no say-so at all in anything is just not realistic.”
Hmm. Do Obama supporters who celebrate his hoped-for ability to bring us together realize that “us” includes the insurance and drug lobbies?
O.K., more seriously, it’s actually Mr. Obama who’s being unrealistic here, believing that the insurance and drug industries — which are, in large part, the cause of our health care problems — will be willing to play a constructive role in health reform. The fact is that there’s no way to reduce the gross wastefulness of our health system without also reducing the profits of the industries that generate the waste.
As a result, drug and insurance companies — backed by the conservative movement as a whole — will be implacably opposed to any significant reforms. And what would Mr. Obama do then? “I’ll get on television and say Harry and Louise are lying,” he says. I’m sure the lobbyists are terrified.
As health care goes, so goes the rest of the progressive agenda. Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world.
Which brings me to a big worry about Mr. Obama: in an important sense, he has in effect become the anti-change candidate.
There’s a strong populist tide running in America right now. For example, a recent Democracy Corps survey of voter discontent found that the most commonly chosen phrase explaining what’s wrong with the country was “Big businesses get whatever they want in Washington.”
And there’s every reason to believe that the Democrats can win big next year if they run with that populist tide. The latest evidence came from focus groups run by both Fox News and CNN during last week’s Democratic debate: both declared Mr. Edwards the clear winner.
But the news media recoil from populist appeals. The Des Moines Register, which endorsed Mr. Edwards in 2004, rejected him this time on the grounds that his “harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.”
And while The Register endorsed Hillary Clinton, the prime beneficiary of media distaste for populism has clearly been Mr. Obama, with his message of reconciliation. According to a recent survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Mr. Obama’s coverage has been far more favorable than that of any other candidate.
So what happens if Mr. Obama is the nominee?
He will probably win — but not as big as a candidate who ran on a more populist platform. Let’s be blunt: pundits who say that what voters really want is a candidate who makes them feel good, that they want an end to harsh partisanship, are projecting their own desires onto the public.
And nothing Mr. Obama has said suggests that he appreciates the bitterness of the battles he will have to fight if he does become president, and tries to get anything done.
