Now What?

What happens when the gloating stops? That's the question that struck me several times when I read the European coverage this morning of the midterm election results in the United States.

The conservative and right-wing European media that might once have aligned themselves with the Bush administration, like the Italian daily Il Giornale or the Spanish paper El Mundo, strained for neutrality in the face of the Democratic victory. Much of the rest of the press surrendered to elation, and bloggers piled in, too.

All portrayed the vote as a plebiscite on Iraq and on the Republican president who took us there. THE GREAT BUSH REFERENDUM was one headline on the Web site of the German weekly Der Spiegel, while the leftish French daily Libération described the elections on yesterday's front page as Bush's "trial" and followed up this morning with the judgment that he'd received "a stinging rebuke." One Libération reader's comments suggest the angry distaste on this side of the Atlantic for the American president, described as "an ultra-religious, alcoholic, uncultured, sectarian and stupid cowboy."

"Et alors?" as the French say: "So what?" Noting that Bush is a bad leader in the view of many Europeans and people in the Middle East does not exactly explain what sort of leadership can be expected from him, or from the United States, now. His defeat has come at the hands of a Democratic Party that may find a clear voice (doubtful), or may simply go on being the un-Republicans. So beneath the jubilation at Bush's comeuppance, there's also a current of dreadful uncertainty.

"What the Europeans want," says French columnist Gilles Delafon of the Journal du Dimanche, "is to believe that the U.S. 'at last is thinking like us!' They see that the Americans have gotten rid of Bush's Congress, that they now oppose the war in Iraq. But it's a hell of a lot more complicated than that, of course. This reaction is based on emotion more than on cold assessment."

The European governments' past responses to adjustments in the administration's course suggest they'd prefer a chastened president to a crippled one. When Condoleezza Rice strengthened the role of diplomacy after taking over as secretary of State in 2005, she found a warm reception from many of the same governments in "the old Europe" that fiercely opposed the American and British drive toward war in Iraq two years earlier.

Since then, while progress on such delicate issues as the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea has been halting and frustrating, it's nonetheless been in line with Europe's conventional wisdom about the need for international consensus. At the same time, fighting terrorism through cooperation, especially among police and intelligence services, has grown.

The European Union's biggest problem, in fact, is its own lack of leadership, and that's getting worse. The British government of Prime Minister Tony Blair is a collection of very lame ducks. French President Jacques Chirac is on his way out. Italy's left-wing coalition is as fragile as cheap crockery, and if Germany has found some momentum under Chancellor Angela Merkel, it has had precious little political influence on the rest of the major players.

At the same time, the ever-patient and always ruthless leaders of the Middle East are, for the most part, confident they've weathered the wave of democratization the Bush administration tried to encourage last year. Without imaginative and confident American leadership, there's not going to be any movement toward peace between Israel and its neighbors, and, indeed, the trends are all toward greater bloodshed, further war. The story leading most of the Arab and Israeli press today was not about the American elections but about the latest massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, where guerrillas continue to rocket towns in Israel.

As for Iraq, the big risk in the near future is that the Democrats, zealous to investigate corruption and abuses as part of their "oversight" functions in the House, will overlook the need to develop an alternative policy. It does no good to hamper what's left of a war effort without quite working up the nerve—or finding the political strength and coherence—to engineer an orderly withdrawal.

But I'm getting ahead of my European friends. Right now, the collective mood is clearly one of relief. "Whew," said another commenter on Libération's Web site. "Like everyone I breathe a sigh of relief reading these results." There's also a tinge of curiosity. Who is this woman Nancy Pelosi? What about that Muslim elected in Minnesota? While the really big question—Where does the West go from here?—remains almost impossible to answer.