Update to Q8: More on Romanian Politics and the U.S. Election

I mentioned earlier that one of our Romanian friends, Silvia, was pretty pessimistic about politics. She said that most people she knew considered the government ineffective and easily persuadable, if you will.

I thought you might want to read a slightly more optimistic assessment, from a man we met over the weekend. (We spoke in rudimentary French, so I might have missed some of his nuance, but hopefully not too much.) During the Communist era, he had been sent from rural Bucovina to Bucharest to work as a mechanic. Now, at age 40 or so, he lives with his wife in a small, bucolic town. The source of much of the distrust in the government is the perception that the 1989 Romanian Revolution was not a 'real' revolution, he said. While the the revolution brought new freedoms, the politicians of post-Communist Romania were -- and continue to be -- culled from the same elite circles that produced the recently-deposed officials, he said.

Yet, to fulfill my promise of optimism: this same man said that popular trust of the government may gradually improve as idealistic young adults begin to interrupt the conglomerations of old power. Perhaps of more interest for readers back home, our acquaintance opined that the election of Barack Obama would mean more for Romania than Romania's own legislative and local elections later this month. He quickly conceded that he was partly joking, but only partly: U.S. foreign policy will determine much of the economic health and political stability of Romanian and its neighbors, he said.

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