There is a limit to how far one can go

Although I took part directly in that fateful and transformative adventure for Italian democracy – the very embodiment of political alternation – I have always detested the footballing expression ‘taking to the pitch’; I would regularly replace it with ‘entering politics’ or ‘entering the fray’. Populism is not my strong point. Even the name “Forza Italia” gave me a bit of a shudder, which I told Berlusconi straight away – he was already all set with his kit and his men in blazers with the sun in their pockets – and yet that name went on to have the success we all know. Il Cav. must have thought, “Well, this Ferrara can write, he’s quick, useful, he’s got experience, but he’s a complete idiot, “a sort of Mariotto Segni on my side””. Now everyone’s taking to the field: fools anointed by the useless academy and thoroughly shady characters anointed by the TV of demagoguery and public shaming, people who compare themselves to Moro, Mattarella, Falcone and Borsellino as if it were nothing; Sciascia would have called them ‘the professionals of martyrdom’. As De Bortoli has noted, they often end up in court, like those from +Europa – one of the most useless political groups – because they have neither rules nor recognised leaders, and if they do have leaders, they’re more like ‘Conducatores’ than anything else. I’d said it myself: we needed either dual leadership or no leadership at all, to prevent people from getting carried away in the hunt for ratings and the gullibility of viewers. But entering politics remains a serious matter; you need charisma, not just sycophantic friends who plot schemes against the gullible over a meal in a trattoria; you need to have the right look for the role – a Caraceni-proof double-breasted suit, perhaps some money, and experience in stadiums all over the world.

Attacked by Luigi Spaventa – a man of genuine academic standing who did not spout anti-Zionist nonsense on social media whilst wearing sandals and a T-shirt in California – Berlusconi responded to his rival in the Rome constituency, a Maynard Keynes-style economist, by saying that before speaking, one ought to have won a few intercontinental cups and a few league titles. Boom!

You’ve got to know how to make a bum!, but not in the sense of Pomezia or Cefalù. Of course, the people are gullible – ‘to speak of the people is to speak of a thousand fools’, as Guicciardini claimed – but there are limits. Even to taking to the field. What did the Conducator have to say? That they’re all corrupt and scoundrels, that a clean-up is needed, that a shake-up of the ruling class is urgently required – a sort of universal ‘Piazza Pulita’ – and that there must be just one man at the helm. That’s a bit thin. Il Cav., with his ‘this side or that side’, his affectionate Italianism, his big bucks and staff, his Rossoneri shirt and his villas, had a programme and a method; he knew how to commission opinion polls and, above all, how to use them with a finesse that these lot can only dream of. He had a certain vision of Italy, as Ezio Mauro – our finest Greek commentator – would say. He embodied a slice of society and individualism; the ‘Reagan of Brianza’ – a nickname bestowed upon him by Gad Lerner – is not merely Monteverde Vecchio, with all due respect, or a small village in the province of Latina that granted him honorary citizenship. Unfortunately, ‘Il Cav.’ set a precedent across the continents, right down to his symmetrical opposite: he who was a strictly constitutional and pro-European narcissist, a lover of life capable of emotion and dignity, even in his most acrobatic excesses – unlike his wicked imitator, his perverse symmetrical opposite, that Trump from Queens who has turned the United States into an annex of his own ‘Report’.

Taking to the field – after Grillozzo’s rubber dinghy escapade, after the gathering of those with two degrees who spend their days loafing about, after the Rousseau system – has become nothing more than a savage power grab, and that’s that. Or perhaps a way of dealing with personal neuroses, dissatisfaction and the obvious psychotragic issues revealed in their autobiographies. You’d be better off staying at home.