Both countries currently have center-left governments in power. (Of course, the political center in Greece is not in the same location as the political center in the USA!). The Democrats are in power in the USA and PASOK in Greece. Both these center-left governments have tried hard this past year, in the best ways they believed in, to help the economies of their respective countries come out of the terrible economic crises they had fallen in. The economies of both countries are still in deep trouble, and happy ends are not in sight, in either country. In the USA, the Democrats in power are accused of not doing enough to improve the economy. PASOK, in Greece, is accused of imposing too much austerity and hurting Greek families in the process.

In both countries, the center-right governments, the Republicans in the USA and Nea Democratia in Greece, who were in power previously, had each helped plunge their countries into the historical economic crises they each face currently, through their fiscal and monetary policies. The voting publics in both countries, threw out these center-right governments in total disgust in their last national elections. A year or two into their respective crises, the people of both countries are really angry about the misery that economic conditions have brought to their lives. And they are angry at both the two large political parties in their countries, as well as at the whole political system. Greeks are very clear in their anger, and much more active in their resistance. Americans are much more confused about what’s wrong and fairly passive.

Both countries are facing elections this November, in just a couple of weeks. In the USA, the Republican party has managed to disengage its image from the guilt they carry for plunging the American economy in the worst economic crisis in almost a centrury. Instead, they seem to have been successful in convincing the American electorate that the party to blame is the Democrats, because they have not been able to lift the American economy fast enough from the crisis that the Republicans created in the first place.

In Greece, echoing a fascinating parallel, Nea Democratia has been successfully disengaging the image of their party from the blame they hold for the historic economic crisis the country is in. Instead, they seem to be successful in focusing the public anger on the strategy that PASOK has embarked on to save the economy, the Memorandum with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. This, of course, has been an easy thing to accomplish, as the suffering that Greeks experience from the austerity measures dictated by the Memorandum and the fall of the economy is deeply painful.

Though the upcoming elections in Greece are not pariamentary, as in the USA, but administrative, it will be very interesting to see, how Greeks will vote in their upcoming elections. And in the USA, it will be interesting to see if the American public’s memory of the Republican fiasco of the last decade is so short lived.

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