This evening, the Italian American Democratic Leadership Council, co-chaired by Robert Blancato and MD Senator Jim Rosapepe, presented Jim Messina, President Obama’s campaign manager,with
the Machiavelli Award as the Italian Democrat of the Year. The reception was held this evening a Carmine’s Restaurant in Washington , D.C. According to the IALC, this award honors the legacy of Niccolo Machiavelli, the first political scientist, and showcases a current political mastermind.
In accepting the award Messina said that he had just returned from a month-long vacation from Italy (“I highly recommend it” he said), with his girlfriend now fiancee and that while visiting Florence he was invited to the mayor’s office and shown the desk that Machiavelli had used.
Speaking at the event was also Lapo Pistelli, a member of Parliament and the foreign policy spokesman for Italy’s Partito Democratico (PD) who had lavish praises for Messina, saying to him at one point: “You saved the world.”
Pistelli noted to the guests that “We have a crazy system in Italy, a crazy electoral law . . . not an easy system to understand,” that is why, he said, he could be in Washington thirty days before Italy’s national elections, because under Italy’s political system he had been already assured reelection.