Italian Voters Don't Care What Obama Thinks

Eric R. Terzuolo

Politics, Europe

Even a popular U.S. leader can’t make a difference by giving his seal of approval.

President Obama will leave the White House with solid approval ratings. But it is hard to use popularity to help others. In the 2016 elections, the president could not tip the balance in Hillary Clinton’s favor. On the international level as well, another beneficiary of strong White House support just suffered an unexpectedly harsh defeat.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had been a darling of the international community since early 2014, when he wrested the leadership of the Italian government from Enrico Letta, a fellow member of the moderate left Democratic Party. Renzi had become head of the party two months earlier. Even leaders of other European Union countries, where skepticism and cynicism about Italy are the norm, recognized Renzi as a reformist who offered the best chance of countering the rise of populism, most notably the Five Star Movement, which had won over 25 percent of the vote in the February 2013 legislative elections.

President Obama had been seeing a lot of Renzi. In April of last year, for example, Renzi visited Washington and, after their meeting at the White House, the president was positively effusive in praising Renzi’s leadership. A few weeks before our presidential elections, Renzi was back for a state visit, including the Obamas’ last state dinner on October 18. Once again the president praised Renzi for “the energy and the optimism, the vision and the values that can carry Italy, and Europe, forward.“