The German media is obsessed with two items these days. One involves the metaphysical dimensions of “Borat”, the film in which a British Jewish comic has the nerve to make fun of almost everything, insulting almost everyone on his journey across the US in the role of a Kazakh reporter out to discover the wonders of “the greatest country in the world”. But nothing comes off worse than US society itself. The other topic involves the dirty tricks that are slashing through the supposedly civilized veneer of the electoral process in the the US in its final days. The chaotic absurdity of the two scenarios are related, and to the Germans add up to a serious questioing of the democratic process itself in the US. Is this the process for which German soldiers should go to war? Never mind Iraq, considered an illegal lost cause from the start, what about all those other places where help is requested to set up democracies? Suppose they don’t work any better than this miserable election? Democracy isn’t doing very well as a concept of a political concept in Europe these days. Germany struggles along with a coalition government that has little leadership. but it works fine compared to its neighbours. Austria has had no government at all in the month since its election and seems unable to make any progress in finding one. Sweden couldn’t get through one week of a newly-elected government without firing several new cabinet ministers because they had failed to fulfill the fundamental duties of a democratic society. Several hadn’t paid obligatory broadcasting fees for ten years, including the new minister of culture, others avoided taxes by hamstering money in off-shore accounts, several employed illegal cheap workers. Worst of all, none of the East European states under Soviet control has come up with a stable working democracy after fifteen years iof trying, and several, like the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, are getting worse. Only Slovenia from the former Yugoslavia really seems to have joined the west. Could it be that German ex-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder got it right when he recently wrote that Vladimir Putin, a loyal friend of Germany, and a “pure democrat”, was the only kind of leader that could bring order to Eastern Europe. Maybe Borat knows.