By: Joseph on Lunedì 02 Settembre 2002 15:53
Dal quotidiano inglese Guardian, di qualche mese fa :
The Prince
Is Silvio Berlusconi a medieval thowback to a time when rich men could buy power? Or the shape of things to come? And is he dangerous - or just a colourful rogue? In the second of his weekly dispatches from Europe, Joe Klein meets the billionaire prime minister who just wants to be loved
Milan: I arrive in a mild state of Europhoria. The train from Paris wasn't the Orient Express, but it was clean, swift and on time. The euros in my pocket, aesthetically challenged though they may be, will be accepted by any cab driver: the confusing ritual of money-changing at the train station has been eliminated. I have no nostalgia for the messy, melodramatic lira. In a wink of time, a gazillion zeroes have been abolished. Happiest fact of all: I am in Italy, a preternaturally pleasant place, a nation obsessed with the notion of beauty. Even its shape seems to have emerged from an atelier. Not just a boot: a woman's high-heeled boot kicking a Sicilian rock.
"Italy is not a serious country," an American foreign policy expert confided a few weeks ago. (I sometimes wonder how serious America is, given our witless and tendentious public life - and America is about as serious as countries get.) As I emerge from the station and look to my right, there is the darkened Pirelli building, gashed by a small plane several weeks ago; the horizontal scar, several storeys deep, looks very much like the wound caused by the first airliner to strike the World Trade Centre. It is stunning; it stops me dead. It was an accident, but it is also a reminder: any place can become very serious instantaneously these days.
And then there's Silvio Berlusconi, who must be taken seriously now as well. A year after his election, he has survived as Italy's prime minister - he was gone in a matter of months after he was first elected in 1994 - and he remains quite popular, no small feat in a country that has had 57 governments in the past 50 years. What's more, we now know that Berlusconi's victory was not an isolated act of improvidence, but the beginning of a continent-wide trend; in fact, Berlusconi has come to seem downright responsible, given Europe's subsequent electoral follies. Last week, he thrust himself into the midst of global politics by dragooning the leaders of Nato, including Blair and Bush, to a lavish ceremony commemorating the new strategic partnership with Russia. The deal was already done, of course; the ceremony was Berlusconi's idea. He seems to have created a new role for himself in the world, a role he prepared for as a youth, when he worked as an entertainer on ocean liners: he is now party planner to the power elite. He is absolutely brilliant at this, as we shall see.
Berlusconi represents a decidedly medieval form of postmodern politics: the rich guy with no experience in public life who buys himself a title. He is the benign despot of a virtual kingdom of his own design; the kingdom includes his political party, his television networks, his real estate, his fortune and his most important asset of all: his personality. He has pretty much ignored the conflict-of-interest questions inherent in such a duchy; he tests the limits as he goes along, skirts along the edge of propriety and greets each day with brio. About six months ago, he decided that he wanted to be foreign minister as well as prime minister, and so he is. Both prime minister and foreign minister have been and remain America's staunchest defenders on the continent.
Most of his opponents are completely at a loss as to how to deal with this. "He is the ultimate salesman," says Arturo Parisi, a director of Margharita, the most moderate leftwing party. "He has no shame. Professional politicians have some sense of shame, of constraint. He has no constraints. He's an entertainer, a seducer. He uses his money. He gave expensive watches to all the backbenchers in his party. How do you compete with that?"
And so, this week's thought: if France's political situation seems an echo of America's recent, unlamented past, is it possible that politicians such as Berlusconi are the future? After all, we've already elected a billionaire mayor of New York, and hugely wealthy senator from New Jersey and a professional wrestler as governor of Minnesota.
I have stopped in Milan because it is Berlusconi's city. He was born here, the son of a bank manager. He began his career as a real-estate developer here, bought his first television station, Milan 58, here - and made a fortune showing programs such as Dallas and Dynasty to a public numbed to enlightenment by the ponderous high-mindedness of the state television system. Several of his oldest, closest friends live here, including Fedele Confalonieri, who played the piano when Berlusconi sang on the cruise ships and is now the chairman of Mediaset, Berlusconi's television empire.
Confalonieri greets me in his office, which is understated and elegant. None of the usual plaques and awards and pictures of smiling bigshots shaking hands. We sit at a round wooden table with a marquetry top. Coffee comes. "Berlusconi was a very good singer, especially of French songs," says Confalonieri, without pomposity or affect. He is an entirely pleasant man. He tells the story of Berlusconi's business successes, and then he says, "I am his oldest friend, but I am not a blind follower. We disagree sometimes. For example, I advised him not to go into politics. I told him he wouldn't win. He said that he would. A new product was needed in the political market. The political class was an esoteric priesthood. He said, 'Now we have bitter beer and sweet Coke, and there is a need for something in the middle.'"
There were other reasons for Berlusconi's public jump. Both the political and entrepreneurial classes of Italy were under intense investigation for taking and receiving bribes. Governments were falling; the establishment political party, the Christian Democrats, crumbled under the pressure. Berlusconi's fortune was in jeopardy. If he could win control of the government, he thought he might stem the prosecutorial tide. This turned out not to be true; the prosecutors came, convicted, were overturned and are trying to convict again. "I am sure he did some things wrong," says one of Berlusconi's more prominent public defenders." But everyone - Agnelli, Pirelli, politicians of all political parties - played by the same rules. Everyone did something wrong."
Berlusconi started his own political party in 1994. He used his corps of advertising salespeople as local organisers. He called the party Forza Italia, which was the chant Italian football fans used to cheer on the national team. He said Forza Italia would not be red (communist) or black (fascist), it would be blue. Blue was the colour of the national football team. He formed the party and won the election in three months.
Mario Calabrighisi of La Stampa told me about a time he accompanied Berlusconi to Parma: "Parma is a red city. It has a popular communist government. Berlusconi's advisers told him to have a closed meeting with Forza Italia supporters, but he wanted to go out into the streets. For the first 10 or 15 minutes in the main square, he had some real problems. People were shouting at him, saying, 'Berlusconi get out of here.' It was as if he didn't hear them. He had a compliment for everyone. Nice tie. What a beautiful ring. He went through the streets, visiting shops. 'What a wonderful store window!' And not only that, when he saw a store window that could stand improvement, he asked the shopkeeper if he could rearrange it a bit. He goes into the window and moves things around. 'I suspect you will have more business this way,' he said. 'In fact, I'll come back in three months. If business improves, you can buy me a cup of coffee. If it gets worse, I'll pay you the difference.' This is what you have to understand about Berlusconi. This is what he loves to do, especially on the world stage."
At the G8 summit in Genoa last year, for example, Berlusconi wanted the entrance to the palace where the meeting was to be held lined with lemon trees. But there was a problem. The meeting was in June; lemons bloom in winter. Berlusconi's gardener delivered the bad news and was told by the prime minister, "I think I have a solution." Lemons were sewn on to the trees.
The question is whether Berlusconi pays the same amount of attention to actually running his country. He came to office on the promise of radical free-market reform and has been pretty much stymied. "He is not Machiavelli's Prince," says Giuliano Ferrara, the editor of Il Foglio, an enormous, raggedy bear of a man who started life as a communist - he was educated in Moscow for several years - and emerged as one of Berlusconi's staunchest defenders on national television. "He doesn't want to be feared. He wants to be loved. He has no barricades. He is ready to negotiate everything. From that point of view, he may be unbeatable. He will always find an agreement."
Indeed, his close friend Confalonieri concludes our interview with a rather fetching analysis. "He is the same as an American. He wants everybody to be happy now. For years in Italy, we've been plagued by two philosophies that put off happiness into the distant future. The church says it will come after you die. The communists say it will come hundreds of years from now when everyone is equal. It isn't difficult to compete against such ideas."
I ask Confalonieri if it might be possible for me to meet with the prime minister. "Of course!" he says and calls - or appears to call - Rome, right there and then. Berlusconi is not in, but the meeting will be arranged, he promises.
A likely story, I think.