Print
PDF FormatBerlusconi developed and honed his marketing and communications abilities during years of traveling throughout Italy to meet his clients. He went to cities and towns and held meetings with small and medium-sized industrialists and merchants to persuade them to develop commercial ties with his group. Day after day, for almost a generation, Berlusconi met with clients and potential clients, and he has come to understand them deeply. He has thereby learned what the most astute students of the Italian nation already knew: This is a people whose nature has remained intact despite the political and technological changes of modernity, due to its innate conservatism. Italians adhere to their customs and traditions, adapting to their surroundings, but without abandoning the basics of their culture.19
Berlusconi has also internalized the ideas, demands and aspirations of the Italian middle class. These independents believe in hard work and detest governmental intervention; they are moderate Catholics whose lives center around the family, which in turn often functions as the core of their business. Berlusconi has come to know them, and they have come to admire him. They regard him as one of them. He offers the model of a successful family business which flourished thanks to diligence and common sense, and he does not disavow his past like other nouveaux riches.
Moreover, Berlusconi’s methods and values are not those of the professional manager trained in business school. They are based on a different, more traditional system of values and ideas: That of the classical business “patron”—paternalistic and charming, personally involved in the affairs of his companies and their employees, easily excited or insulted, and influenced by such factors as community loyalty or family prestige, rather than merely by cold financial calculations. To this day, his preferred “board of directors,” for both business and politics, consists of a meeting of family members around the dining room table, and the small circle of his confidants is the one in which final decisions are made.20
An excellent example of the qualities that built Berlusconi’s empire can be found in a story related by his right-hand man, Fedele Confalonieri: During a marketing meeting with thirty potential advertisers on his television networks a few years ago, Berlusconi bet Confalonieri that he could give each of the thirty participants a different compliment on the first handshake. “Your plant is admirable,” he said to the first. “They tell me you have two degrees,” he remarked to the second. “I hear you have recently become a father, my congratulations,” to the third; “Your clothes are very refined,” to the fourth, and so on. When they came to the last guest, Confalonieri was certain that Berlusconi would fail: This was a stranger, ugly and distastefully dressed. But Berlusconi did not flinch. He walked up to the man, shook his hand, smiled and said, “How nice to meet someone with such an impressive handshake.”21
Berlusconi became such a popular figure in Italy that he received an accolade granted only to the few: A nickname so well-known that there is no need to state his name expressly. The legendary head of Fiat, Giovanni Agnelli, is the Avvocato (“the Lawyer”); Carlo de Benedetti, until recently the head of Olivetti, is the Ingegnere (the Engineer); and Berlusconi has won the title of Cavaliere (“the Knight”), based on the Cavaliere del Lavoro (“Knight of Labor”, i.e., outstanding industrialist) award granted him by the state. Berlusconi’s opponents prefer another nickname: Sua Emittenza (“His Emitence”), a wordplay on the honorific form with which Catholic cardinals are addressed (Sua Eminenza—“His Eminence”), alluding to Berlusconi’s excessive influence on Italy through his media outlets. Others have named him Il Grande Communicatore (“the Great Communicator”)—a deliberate reference to Ronald Reagan—because of his legendary public relations skills.
In the late 1980s, however, no one could have predicted that Berlusconi would soon make use of his skills as a communicator to enter politics directly.
VI
The Black Knight
And of all princes, for a new prince it is impossible to escape a reputation of cruelty....The Prince, ch. 17
It is Berlusconi’s practice to assemble his close associates from time to time for a Saturday meeting to discuss strategy. On such a Saturday, March 20, 1993, Berlusconi wished to deliberate on the projected results of a referendum to be held a month later, in which a proposal for changing the electoral system from a proportional one to a district-based, first-past-the-post system was expected to be approved by an overwhelming majority. Berlusconi posed the following question to his circle: Due to the disintegration of the conservative political establishment in the wake of Clean Hands, the new electoral system was liable to mean an overwhelming victory by the left in the upcoming elections. Faced with this danger, could and should Berlusconi and his group of companies take action?
Most of Berlusconi’s inner circle, like himself, holds conservative views, but even left-leaning associates (such as talk-show host Maurizio Costanzo) thought the creation of a leftist hegemony in Italy would be disastrous for the country. Berlusconi therefore decided to attempt to reorganize the anti-leftist forces, leaving open the question of what role he and his corporation should play.
At first, Berlusconi attempted to promote the creation of a new conservative bloc as an “outsider”—a bloc which would be headed by an individual like Mario Segni, who was almost the only prominent Christian Democrat member of Parliament to remain untouched by Clean Hands. A group of men from Berlusconi’s marketing company began to search Italy for conservative candidates to run in the next parliamentary elections. The delegitimization of the old political order made it necessary to discover a new type of candidate, one capable of winning in local, personalized elections. Berlusconi’s representatives sought such people from among municipal leaders, merchants, industrialists, academics, intellectuals and athletes. Their two main criteria were the candidate’s anti-leftist opinions and marketing potential. A lack of prior political involvement or reputation was regarded as advantageous.
Meanwhile, following the referendum that approved electoral reform, the collapse and disintegration of the old centrist parties accelerated. In the local elections of June 1993, the left scored overwhelming victories in most localities. It became more and more apparent that if action were not taken quickly to establish a new anti-leftist bloc, the left could anticipate a victory of unprecedented dimensions in the next round of municipal elections in November 1993, and in the general elections in early 1994.
But the hopes of creating a new conservative bloc in time for the next round of municipal elections were dashed. Most of the veteran centrists who had not lost all credibility with the electorate preferred to hook up with the left—purportedly to “exert a moderating influence,” but actually to avoid the political death universally forecast for non-leftist candidates in the upcoming elections. Worst of all, Mario Segni, who many in the center-right had hoped would emerge as a unifying leader, proved to be a total disappointment. He lacked the decisiveness and clear thinking required to establish speedily a new anti-left front. For months, while the political clock continued to tick, Segni vacillated between joining with the left in order to “moderate” it, and establishing a new centrist alliance to run against it. In the end, neither goal was attained, and Segni wasted a tremendous opportunity for support.
The local elections of November 1993 continued the “crisis of the moderates.” In the wake of the collapse of the traditional center only two non-leftist entities of significance remained: The Northern League, a regional party based on anti-government agitation (principally against high taxation) and the personality of its mercurial leader, Umberto Bossi; and the National Alliance, an offspring of the neo-Fascist party which had purportedly repudiated its past. Both were relatively small parties lacking a national political base and the legitimacy to constitute a significant alternative to the left. The election results were as expected: A major victory for the left in most cities. In some places, the collapse of the moderates was so great that the field was left open to two leftist candidates who ran against each other. The victory of the left in the general elections seemed assured.
