The Hardest Word
By Anne Applebaum (THE WASHINGTON POST, 26/09/06):
"We have screwed up. Not a little, but a lot. . . . If we have to give an account to the country of what we have done in four years, what are we going to say?"
I wish I could gleefully report that the words quoted above had been spoken by an American politician, preferably at a large public gathering with lots of media. But, alas, they were pronounced by a foreign politician with an unpronounceable surname: Ferenc Gyurcsany, the prime minister of Hungary. For those readers who don't follow Hungarian politics on a daily basis, he also said that "we lied, morning, noon and night" and conceded that his country had stayed afloat during his government's first term thanks to "divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks."… Seguir leyendo »