How could the Italians vote for such a monster?
An unctuous, complacent megalomaniac. A corrupt businessman who entered politics purely to promote his own enterprises. A media magnate who uses his empire to destroy the opposition. Step right up and sling some mud on the new Italian prime minister.
Well, I’ve met the man. My opinion about the truth of these statements concerning Silvio Berlusconi? None of the above. However, I’m afraid it would take many more words than one is permitted in an op-ed editorial for even the beginnings of a proper defense.
The mud-slinging has been a bit like watching a ping-pong match. The comments of the Italian left are repeated by the European press, bounce across the ocean and are rehashed and regurgitated by our press before bouncing back to Italy, where the same leftist papers which started all the uproar in the first place report on how the foreign press is as concerned as they are about having such a horrible man running one of the world’s leading democracies.
Though he avoided comments of a denigrating nature, even the Washington Post’s E.J.Dionne, whose commentaries on domestic politics are usually to my liking, added his two cents to the general mayhem of what I consider misinformation and with which I beg to differ.
According to E.J.Dionne “the odd thing about the Italian result is that Berlusconi won even though the center-left incumbents had done a reasonably good job managing Italy’s finances, making it a full partner in the European currency and fostering economic growth.”
The truth is, it isn’t odd at all. The center-left coalition did indeed guide Italy’s entrance into the Euro system according to the criteria dictated by Maastricht, but at an exorbitant cost in terms of fiscal pressure that strangled the middle classes. Moreover, it brought Italy to the lowest level of growth in an already economically stagnant Europe. Had Silvio Berlusconi been allowed to finish his term in office in the mid-nineties, he would have executed the reforms necessary for Italy’s solid entry, rather than the Band-Aid job performed by Romano Prodi.
Other editorialists marvel at the indifference of Italians toward Berlusconi’s judicial problems, the accusations of corruption and association with the Mafia. The Italians are not at all indifferent to those charges. They have just come to take them for what they are: A plot by the left-leaning magistrates to keep Berlusconi out of power. They realize that they have been had at all levels. Left-leaning Italians didn’t vote their own into office only to see the agenda of the center-right performed, and badly at that.
E.J. Dionne reflects on whether or not The Third Way is dead and says that the problem with the left is that having abandoned their revolutionary slogans and agendas, they are no longer exciting. He claims that the left in Italy was “boring” compared to Berlusconi’s “opportunistic dynamism.”
The left has been everything but boring since they took office. They were a mishmash of parties who disagreed bitterly over every issue, from fiscal responsibility to foreign policy. It became obvious to many Italians that their sole purpose for maintaining their alliance was to keep the Italians from going to the polls in order to keep Berlusconi out of power!
The question of the Third Way is not whether or not it is dead, but understanding that the path to get there depends on one’s point of departure. Britain had its years of Thatcherism, Germany, the CDU with Helmut Kohl, and the United States, the Reagan era. For better or worse, the conservatism of those years allowed those countries in the years that followed to be able to afford the luxury of a social heart. The same cannot be said of Italy.
Italians also observed how Berlusconi’s alliance put aside party politics for the benefit of Italy’s image before the rest of the world, for the sake of loyalty to its allies, and out of respect for international agreements. Three instances that come to mind are: international aid to Albania when it was on the brink of anarchy, the enlargement of NATO to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and the intervention in Kosovo, enabling the use of NATO bases at Aviano and Sigonella.
In all three of these circumstances, the initiatives were only made possible thanks to the supporting votes of Berlusconi’s opposition forces, since the center-left government’s own partners in alliance were against them.
None of these praiseworthy practices reach the American press. All we hear abroad are the same slogans and appellations propagated by Berlusconi’s enemies at home. It just makes me wonder about the truth of what is reported about other countries that I know less about.
June 2001
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