His candidacy is unlikely. And his success as candidate for president of Italy is even unlikelier. Still, Berlusconi’s run for the office is not frivolous. Nor is he being laughed off the political stage. Instead, Berlusconi, whose on/off again tenure as prime minister lasted from the mid-1900s to 2011, is making one last, quasi-serious effort to play a prominent part in Italian politics.
Berlusconi is 85, and not in the best of health. More to the point, his public persona is so stained, and his political legacy so tarnished, it’s hard to fathom how anyone in Italy can take him seriously. Even at a time when leaders in liberal democracies struggle to be respected or even trusted, Berlusconi is a case apart. His long record in business and politics is an embarrassment, a national humiliation. Instead of being welcomed back into the political fold, he should be expelled from it, forever.
In Italy the prime minister is usually a divisive figure. But not so the president. The president, whose term is seven years, is generally expected to be a political centrist associated with probity and moral authority. What an absurd fit for a man whose record the New York Times recently summarized this way: “There are the countless trials; the investigations over mob links and bribing lawmakers; the tax fraud conviction; the ban from office; the sentence to perform community service in a nursing home; his use of his media empire for political gain; his use of the government to protect his media empire; the wiretapped conversations of his libertine party guests regaling the Caligulian extent of his bung-bunga debaucheries; his close relations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, who gifted Mr. Berlosconi a large bed; his appraisal of Barack Obama as ‘young, handsome and sun tanned’; his comparing a German lawmaker to a concentration camp guard; and his second wife’s divorcing him for apparently dating an 18-year old.”
Berlusconi was a central figure in the book I wrote with Todd Pittinsky, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy. While Berlusconi was lustful in several ways, in his prime he was most famous for, most infamous for, his lust for sex. He was on a constant prowl, specifically for sexual gratification, resulting in a series of scandals that ended only after he left the political scene. But the wonder was always not what he did but how the Italian people tolerated, accepted, or even welcomed his behavior which sometimes went from antic to abusive. He was not, after all, a Roman Emperor. He was the late 20th and early 21st leader of a liberal democracy that was a member of NATO.
Of course, the answer to the riddle of this leader’s longevity lies not with him but with the context in which he was embedded – and with his followers. Italy has long been considered the only country in Western Europe that after World War I failed to develop a reasonably effective and enduring political system. Further, in his heyday – which lasted many years – Berlusconi played the Italian people like a fiddle. He fed their illusions; played to their basest fears; set them against each other; lied and otherwise misled; and promoted corruption and cronyism. He lasted because he was a showman and a strongman, both of which are types long admired in Italian society. (Think Mussolini.)
Again, Berlusconi in his dotage is unlikely to get to the top of the greasy pole. Still, the fact that he’s trying, and is not being dismissed out of hand, should serve as a warning. Even leaders with wretched track records attract some of the people some of the time.