In an interview dating back to 1994, right after the electoral dispute which lead him to the government for the first time, Silvio Berlusconi reveals the secret of his being successful: “I have a lots of money and Italians wish to have a lots of money, I have women and Italians like women, I’m the owner of an important football club and Italians love football.” His honest confession, hidden for long time and rediscovered thanks to a recent documentary, discloses the mystery behind his political-electoral appeal. He has never been interested neither in presenting himself nor in presenting his political program in an elitarian way. Breaking a tradition lasting since the foundation of Italian Republic (1948), Berlusconi has drawn a political program which didn’t want to present itself as a guide above Italians but as a one that, walking besides them, wanted to highlight their vices, becoming a mean of identification. Doing it, besides his worldwide known reputation as a “Great Performer,” he has rediscovered himself as the biggest Italian sociologist after World War II. Indeed he perfectly knew Italian society, he exasperated its controversial tastes and he brought them in public morality, condemning what until then the political class has banned as immoral, not appropriate. Furthermore, he allowed them to become moral principles not only in private, but also in the public sphere. Like this, a pious and backward society, as the Italian one was, has come to modernity. What, until then, was morally banned, it has started to be public accepted, to become a model. Berlusconi didn’t just understand and drive Italian society to get from it electoral benefits but he has also guaranteed it the terrible modus Vivendi that today national and international media report.
In addition, every time there was a problem, and during his 20-year term the country has faced a lots of them, he transformed it in an emergency, legitimating his strong personality and elevating himself as the hero saving the Homeland (this is another thing that, as the History has taught us, Italians really like). It didn’t matter neither that the “presumed” emergencies were created by the Italian bad practice of “an ounce of cure worth more than a pound of prevention” that he knew and he abused, substituting it to the more responsible “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” nor that the “presumed” emergencies guaranteed only a short-term governmental perspective. Berlusconi, indeed, looked for, wished, such a practice because it allowed him to get a higher consensus and a higher popularity, delegating the problems, the serious ones not their fake media representations, to the coming governments. Like this, Mario Monti has come in power. Indeed, when the practice of the “presumed” emergencies, and its disastrous consequences on the country, were about to explode, unavoidable was his retreat. A retreat that, coherently to what was told above, was actually imposed more by the attentions that Italians drove on his sexual scandals than on the ones denouncing the devastating situation he has lead the country to. Mario Monti took his office and, in one of the first press conferences, deeply knowing the situation of the country Berlusconi left, promoted a systemic reform that as a first target had, changing the Italian mentality. He knew indeed how harmful for Italian society has been Berlusconism and how it has created a society in its own image. Monti’s task, and the one of the technical government he has been holding, has had an advantage though. Not being invested by a direct mandate from the people, he could avoid the damaging political-electoral consensus’ dynamics and he could take the needed unpopular policies that European Union asked and the situation of the country imposed. But the Italian electorate, exasperated of misgovernment and of deeply worrying economic conditions, after a patient first period, has started to burnout its frustrations against the ones who were promoting austerity. The dynamic of short-term consensus, of fake media representations and of delegating consequences to the coming governments are practices they have interiorized and so, the long-perspective reforms, Monti government has taken, have started not to be appreciated by the majority of Italians. This highlights another feature of Italians that both Berlusconi and Monti perfectly know: more importance is given to the personal interest, a short-term wealthier situation, than to the Common Good of the country, the long-term benefits that a country close to bankrupt needs. Specularly to what has been told until now, lays the substantial difference between Berlusconi and Monti: the first one is a middleclass-man, he addresses to the mass, he is interested in popularity, his first interest is his political-electoral success; the second one is an elite-man, he addresses to the responsible elites who still care about the country, he is interested in the consensus about the contents of his policies, he cares first about the Common Good of the country (when he took office he refused the wage as a prime minister). Data, reported by a recent survey, show this difference of approach, highlighting the middle-class electorate of Berlusconi and the upper class electorate of Monti.
The electoral crossroads of April 2013 will allow us to understand how much Berlusconi’s model of society is still rooted and if the short governmental experience of Monti has instead changed the trend. Today, we don’t know yet if Berlusconi will take part in the coming elections; he is reflecting silently and he is waiting the reform of the electoral law in order to understand how suitable it can be for his re-election. The only certainty we have, the most distressing, is instead that Monti will not present himself as a candidate. Despite the numerous encouragements, he has indeed declined, wishing the best, in the primary interest of the country, to the ones who will take part in the electoral dispute. This is the most worrying certainty Italy could have faced in a deeper crisis. Anyone, not just Berlusconi, who will take office in the election of April, will indeed restart to be addressed by the dynamics of short-term consensus, worried more about losing popularity than about the interests of the country, and will neutralize, in order to satisfy his blind electorate, the benefits of Monti’s term. As Plato stated, in his work The Republic, there are three different kinds of ruling class which can administrate the power: the politicians, the technocrats, the philosophers. Having completely failed the first ones, and the scandals of the last days have re-affirmed it, being the third ones a romantic utopia possible just on a theoretical hypothesis, the second option seems the only possibility to go through. But neither Italians nor the technocrats seem wanting to go through it. Bertolt Brecht explained, 70 years ago, that the misfortune is a feature “not of the country which does not have heroes but of the country which does need them.” Was he prophetically referring to Italy at the beginning of the 21st century?
