GIARDINI NAXOS, Italy ― It was the cab driver?s last trip of the evening, close to midnight, running me from the G-7 summit press filing center to my hotel a few miles away, and as he sped down the deserted streets we made small talk about that day?s meetings.
He was an older guy, driving an older minivan, whose English was even more limited than my Italian. I said the day?s meetings had gone fine when, placing my accent, he asked me how Signor Trump was doing.
I almost answered automatically ? he was fine ? when on a lark I told him that I?d written a story saying people thought he was ?molto pazzo? ? very crazy. That many Italians were saying this.
Which was when he raised a hand: ?No. No. Signor Trump non ? molto pazzo. Signor Trump ? tutto pazzo.?
Over the next few minutes I was able to discern some of his other views on Signor Trump. That he was an old man but acted like a ?bambino.? That there was something not right with his ?testa.? And how did he possibly get so rich being so dumb?
Hearing this wasn?t surprising. I?d already talked to people in Rome, Milan and Genoa, and this seemed to be the consensus view in Italy. (Indeed, a new Pew poll shows that low regard for President Donald Trump is not confined to Italy, but is pretty common around the world.) Trump?s recent visit to Rome drew protests, but the mayor?s refusal to grant permits kept them relatively modest.
That there were protests at all was, from my viewpoint, a breathtaking reversal. As it happened, I had also been in Italy eight years earlier ― not as a working journalist, but on a two-year sailing sabbatical ― when a different American president had come into office.
The contrast could not have been more stark. Barack Obama had been celebrated and cheered as a sure sign that the world was at a turning point. If a major power that had been among the last nations in the civilized world to outlaw slavery could elect as its leader someone from the race of those slaves ? well, maybe the planet had some hope after all.
As unpopular as Trump is now in the world, Obama was beloved eight years ago. His visit to Berlin?s Tiergarten Park in 2008 drew a crowd of 200,000 ? before he had even been elected. Throngs of well-wishers lined the streets of Rome to cheer his motorcade during a 2009 Vatican visit.
He had not been in office a full year before the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded him the Peace Prize ? not for actual peace he had achieved in those first months, but for the prospect of peace he offered.
The fact that Obama was not able to completely end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even close the United States? prison for accused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, certainly led to a letdown for many of his European fans.
Alice Salvatore, 35, is an elected member of the Regional Council of Liguria, the parliament for that region of northwest Italy. She is a member of the Five Star Movement, which supports withdrawing from the European Union and putting ?Italy first.?
It?s striking that Salvatore, despite her youth, belongs to the Five Star Movement political party that wants to pull Italy out of the European Union, turn to protectionist trade policies, and cut back on the number of refugees entering the country.
A populism born of a deep-rooted pessimism ? the same sort of pessimism that helped Trump win the presidency ? has displaced the optimism that had seemed so inevitably ascendant just eight years ago.
Goodbye, hope and change. Hello, God help us all.
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