Ambassador Frederick Vreeland, co-founder of Republicans Abroad for Obama, has sent us another touching story of his conversations with Americans and non-Americans living abroad about their feelings on Sen. Obama's candidacy:
Lucia comes from Lecce, down in the boot of Italy, where she lives with her 83 year old husband, a semi-retired doctor. Lucia definitely has a mind of her own, but said that one thing she and her husband and all the Italians she knows agree on is that the world needs Obama as US president. She reminded me that during the Cold War, in the stand-off between Communism and the Free World, the majority of Italians, including everyone she knows, voted against Communism when the future of the world hung in the balance. At that crucial moment, she says, Italians went out massively to cast their ballots to assure America's position as the world leader. Lucia, her family and her friends were delighted when the Communist world disintegrated, as were the vast majority of Italians. They were proud that they had been on the good side, and of course delighted they had been on the winning side. So, she says, they avidly supported America as the sole SuperPower, following the lead of its president with eager enthusiasm. But Lucia then describes her profound disappointment as the leader of the world, the Chief of State of the nation accepted throughout Italy as Freedom's standard bearer, showed the way -- not to sanity and progress but to suicidal, self-destructive folly. She had been among the most vociferous Italians calling for sacrifices after America's tragic fate on 9/11. But now, she concludes, America's president has led his own people, and all their supporters, over the cliff and into the chasm of unwinable wars in far-off lands. For Lucia, Obama's victory can vindicate all the contributions she and her family doctor have made to parliamentary democracy and civil society -- "God willing," she concludes, not quite daring to be optimistic, "Obama can still save the world from itself."
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