European newspapers say they misjudged middle America

President Bush's victory showed the depth of conservative sentiment in middle America that liberals failed to take account of…

President Bush's victory showed the depth of conservative sentiment in middle America that liberals failed to take account of, many European newspapers commented yesterday.

Left-leaning dailies expressed incredulity and horror at the result - "Oh, God" in small white letters were the only words on an otherwise completely black front page of an inside section of Britain's Guardian. But the same newspaper, which had backed Democratic challenger John Kerry, headlined one article on the election: "Small-town morals win the day".

"The coalition of moderate classes, the financial world and Christian traditionalists gathered in by the [ Bush] strategist Karl Rove expresses the deep-rooted spirit of the country, the domestic mood snubbed by the mass media," said Italy's leading broadsheet Corriere della Sera.

"Fearful of attacks by Osama bin Laden, frightened by the guerrilla warfare in Baghdad, American public opinion decided these are not times for social experiments and found in Bush the values of simplicity, faith, family, community and country."

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American voters preferred Bush, "who looks and indeed talks like a Southern farmer, simple, level-headed and honest" to the tall, aristocratic, French-speaking Kerry, said Hungary's left-wing Nepszabadsag.

Some papers said outright that the US public was wrong.

"How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?" asked the British tabloid Daily Mirror, which vigorously opposed the US-led Iraq war, in a reference to the number of Bush voters.

Turkey's liberal Radikal said American voters had "closed their ears to international public opinion".

"Parts of the US elite are now asking the same questions as are being asked in London, Paris or Berlin: how could it happen? Why didn't the voters realise that Bush's politics are bad for ordinary people?" said Sweden's Svenska Dagbladet.

But another Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, said people had better get used to it. "The world not only needs to be ready for four more years with George Bush but prepare itself for future US leaders to be coloured by religious and moral conservatism."

Belgian dailies agreed that the election result marked the shape of things to come. "Those who think that Bush... will opt for a more consensus-driven course are wrong. The population is backing his approach," wrote De Standaard.

Left-leaning De Morgen said the president may "become even more obsessed by the messianistic self-image he has created himself".

In Russia, the papers said the Bush win would be good for President Vladimir Putin.

"Our guy won - Bush will share his second term with Putin," read the front-page headline in Vremya Novostei. - (Reuters)