Quotes of the Day
When George W. Bush arrived in Rome last week to commemorate the city's liberation from the Nazis 60 years ago, he gave Silvio Berlusconi a present: a red box filled with classic scores from the American songbook: George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Ol' Man River. For the Italian Prime Minister, it was a perfect gift — not only because he once sang these songs for tips on an Italian cruise ship, but because he has long been an avid consumer and salesman of American myths. "I'm in sintonia — in tune — with American values, American culture," Berlusconi told TIME Saturday. In the early 1980s, the budding media baron broadcast the Reagan-era fantasies Dallas and Dynasty into Italian homes. Now that he is Prime Minister, he is selling what he calls an "American Dream story" — his own — to voters, and he's still using TV to do it. Since he owns three of Italy's seven TV stations and has indirect control over three more, it isn't hard for him to get airtime. Take his Forza Italia (Go Italy) party conference, held late last month in a Milan sports arena and televised relentlessly to boost support as Berlusconi heads into this week's European Parliament election. (To mobilize the party faithful, he's running for office as an M.E.P., though he says he won't serve if he wins.) On state-owned RAI 1 and RAI 2 and Berlusconi-owned RETE 4 and CANALE 5, there was Il Cavaliere — the knight, as he likes to be called — waving from the stage while dry-ice smoke was pumped from the back of the arena; standing in front of a hopeful sky-blue backdrop to offer his latest tough-love plan for Italy's troubled economy; or talking gravely about "our duty to stay faithful to the alliance" in Iraq. But the impresario has a problem: the dry ice, laser-light shows and heroic party anthems "are getting old," says La Stampa political columnist Filippo Ceccarelli, a sometime critic. "What were once considered his virtues — the simple language, the spectacle, the ideology of television and consumption — are turning out to be his limits. He has simply been overtaken by events."
Consider the big events of last week: Berlusconi's appearances with Bush, the first stop in a presidential D-Day tour meant to remind Europeans of some things they like about America. "George said today that there has never been such a close and understanding relationship between our two countries," Berlusconi told Time. "I was of course very happy to hear him say this."
Many Italians aren't so happy that Berlusconi is Bush's closest ally on the Continent. In one poll last week, 54% of those surveyed called Bush's visit to Italy "inopportune"; in another poll, 41% said they tended to have a favorable view of the U.S. "except for now that there is a Bush Administration." Their Prime Minister has had no such doubts. More than 80% of Italians opposed the war, but Berlusconi sent 2,700 troops to Iraq after Saddam's fall. When 19 Italians died in a November suicide attack in Nasiriyah, many of his countrymen wondered where Berlusconi was taking them. And now a continuing hostage crisis — which has already left a Genovese security contractor dead — grows more tense as the election nears. In other words, Berlusconi's American Dream strikes a growing number of Italians as a nightmare from which they'd very much like to wake up. "There's fear," says Claudio Caretta, a metalworker from Varese who protested in Rome last week. "You saw what happened in Spain, and you worry that terrorists might try something like that here." As for Berlusconi, "he lets Bush do the thinking. He has no ability to influence real policy."
According to the latest polls, Berlusconi and other Forza Italia candidates are likely to pull just 19% to 24% of the vote in this weekend's European elections and local races, down from the almost 30% that brought him to power in 2001. If Forza Italia falls below 20%, it could shake up his coalition and force him to call new parliamentary elections well ahead of those now scheduled for 2006. Smelling blood, the major center-left opposition parties, led by European Commission President and perennial Berlusconi rival Romano Prodi, have formed a unified ticket for the European ballot, rallying around the same hard-line antiwar platform that led to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's recent victory in Spain.
Iraq isn't Berlusconi's only problem. His two key promises — political reform and economic revival — have largely fizzled. Yes, he has replaced some of the Italian backroom dealmaking with upfront (and televised) plain talk, but it is often drowned out by squabbling within his governing coalition. (Even National Alliance, the second-largest center-right party, recently put up campaign billboards slapping at him.) And despite his halting attempts at fiscal change, Italy's economy is still limping, with the Bank of Italy last week projecting that economic growth this year will not exceed 1%. Berlusconi has failed to deliver on his campaign promises of across-the-board income tax cuts (another American touch) and labor-market reform. His critics say he has sullied Italy's reputation with a long series of embarrassing verbal gaffes; the conflict-of-interest problems that spring from running the country while owning most of its media; and the last in a series of more than a dozen fraud and bribery prosecutions against him, none of them so far successful. His attempts to pass laws that protect him from that final corruption trial — and to pass a "reform" that gives his media company a chance to grab a bigger market share — add to the sense that he has no time or political capital left for Italy's problems. "Berlusconi promised a lot, but it was just talk," says Giuseppe Lamberti, 52, a Milan taxi driver who voted for Forza Italia in 2001 but won't this time. "I've been working for 35 years and I hoped he would understand. But he was more concerned with his own interests."
Giuliano Ferrara, an editor and former Berlusconi Cabinet Minister long counted among his most ardent and articulate defenders, broke with the Prime Minister last month. In "Why We've Lost Our Faith in Berlusconi," an editorial in his Il Foglio daily, Ferrara addressed Il Cavaliere: "You don't guide the country with any measure of political order. You think that everything is owed to you." Italians, Ferrara concludes, have "a sense of the yawn that we want to get rid of."
Most politicians in Berlusconi's position might have hunkered down and tried to de-emphasize the U.S. ties. But billionaires tend to be stubborn, and Berlusconi is convinced he can make the difference. "Berlusconi has organized a referendum on himself," says Edmondo Berselli, editor of the political journal Il Mulino. "This is something he's done before with success. Now it's a real gamble, but he's a gambling man." Little wonder he's confident: Berlusconi's government last month marked the longest uninterrupted span in power in Italy since the fall of Mussolini — 1,060 days. So perhaps the dissatisfaction with Berlusconi is some strange measure of how rare political stability really is in Italy. But as the elections draw near, Berlusconi is downplaying their significance. "I wouldn't give such great importance to these elections," he told TIME. "I think they will go well for us, but with the economy and lack of development in Europe, the opposition has done well, whether it was center-left or center-right. Chirac, notwithstanding his position in Iraq, lost his regional elections. I'm tranquil."
Berlusconi's biography, of course, is all about beating the odds: the son of a salaried bank manager, he convinced his father to invest a retirement bonus in his construction start-up, and made his first million by 30. In the 1980s he created Italy's first private TV network, moved into advertising, publishing, a football club and insurance, then stunned the establishment by jumping into politics in 1994. His opponents — then and now — charge that he did so to avoid getting swept up in corruption investigations. (Berlusconi says the charges against him amount to an attempted political coup by left-leaning magistrates.) Two months after he formed Forza Italia, after a campaign conducted over his own TV network, the voters elected him Prime Minister. Seven months later, he was ousted in typical Italian fashion by disgruntled members of his coalition government. It was another six years in the opposition before Berlusconi returned to power. And now he's trying to ride out his first big storm.
His opponents would hate to admit it, but Berlusconi's decline in popularity may be proof that his grip on the mass media has not put Italian democracy at risk. Ubiquity on the airwaves can't make up for a sense that he has spent so much time hoarding and defending power that he has relatively little to show for it. What has he achieved in three years? "I've fulfilled all my promises," he boasts. "We had five fundamental pledges: raise minimum pensions and job levels, cut taxes and crime, and launch major new public works. We've fulfilled four and part of the fifth — having eliminated [certain] taxes — and we will cut the income tax in the coming months." Opponents say his most significant achievement is a new system for penalizing bad drivers. That's a stretch — but Berlusconi stretches, too. He did raise pensions, for example, but is now looking to cut them. Here's a closer look at his two most critical issues:
The Economy. Berlusconi took office after the heavy lifting required to get Italy into the euro zone had been completed. But he inherited a crushing public debt — more than 100% of gdp — a rigid labor market and an overloaded public bureaucracy. He pledged to turn Italy into Italy Inc., using his business savvy to jump-start the economy. He also promised to improve the school system. His record is mixed: unemployment is down from just under 10% to 8.5%, but industry is hurting — Fiat, Italy's biggest automaker, is going through a financial and dynastic crisis, and Parmalat, its biggest food wholesaler, is mired in a fraud scandal. The country's deficit is estimated to be ballooning to 3.5%, which would put Italy in violation of the E.U.'s Stability and Growth Pact. Even worse for his poll chances is a widely reported belief that prices have skyrocketed since the introduction of the euro — even if official inflation figures don't confirm it. "We'll see if there is a deepening divide between his slice of the electorate and the promise of the Berlusconi miracle," says political analyst Berselli. "By now they will measure his words with their current reality. It all depends if they'll vote with their wallets or for their hopes."
Foreign Affairs. Even without Sept. 11, Berlusconi would have moved Italy closer to the U.S. and its conservative President, with whom he shares a fondness for straight talk. Critics say the alliance came at the wrong time, and that by standing with the U.S. against Germany and France in the walk-up to war, he damaged Italy's standing as a founding member of the E.U. Last week, the first video in more than a month was broadcast of three Italian security guards being held hostage in Iraq. An accompanying message urged Italians, for the safety of the hostages, to rise up against Bush and Berlusconi, warning that "the visit of Bush to your country will increase the division between the Iraqi and Italian people."
Though he shows no sign of turning his back on Bush, Berlusconi no longer boasts about his decision to go to Iraq. His remarks always take into account Italy's widespread opposition, and he notes at every turn that he only sent troops after major combat had ended, and that he has backed a U.N. solution from the start. But the Italian leader often boasts of his personal bond with Bush; as he told Time last year, "I feel I know him like I know my grammar-school friends." According to Renato Farina, a Berlusconi insider and deputy editor of the conservative daily Libero, the two leaders sometimes trade favorite passages from the Bible. "Berlusconi is definitely a man of faith," Farina says. What's missing, however, is what Farina called "a sense of personal sin." "I told him once that God will forgive many things for a single act of mercy, and Berlusconi shot back: 'I don't need to be forgiven for anything. All I've ever done is work hard.'"
Like Bush, Berlusconi can display a certain arrogance, says Jas Gawronski, a European Parliament member and longtime confidant. "He thinks he should have more power, because he's the one who knows best what to do." But while Gawronski described Berlusconi as a "nouveau riche � who respects money and people who have made money," he says there is "nothing snobbish about him at all." Where Bush is a child of privilege who sometimes presents himself as a self-made guy, Berlusconi is the genuine article — and he always associated that kind of bootstrap success with the U.S. Childhood friend Fedele Confalonieri, who now heads Berlusconi's Mediaset television company, remembers his buddy telling him in high school that he'd decided to sell home appliances door-to-door. "That was the first money he made. In America no one is ashamed if he was a newspaper boy or delivery boy. He's this kind of man. When he talks about believing in the American way of life, he really believes it. It's deep in his soul."
Like Bush, Berlusconi seems content with himself, and less than concerned about what others may think of him. But that can be a difficult pose to sustain during a tough election. This week's contest won't be decisive for Il Cavaliere. But it will be a strong indicator of whether or not Berlusconi's American songbook is still something his people want to hear.
- JEFF ISRAELY | Rome
- Silvio Berlusconi's popularity is sagging over the economy, Iraq and his alliance with George W. Bush. An exclusive TIME interview