Who would you have a beer with? In politics, this has been a key question ever since George Bush’s victory over Al Gore in the 2000 US presidential election was attributed in part to the fact that polls indicated that most Americans would rather go clubbing. with the republican (nice, easygoing) rather than with the democrat (pedantic, stuffy, a much less popular doomsayer than Nostradamus). The Beer Question even has a Wikipedia entry, and it is a way of measuring the sympathy and authenticity of a leader. In 2016, for example, most Americans preferred to go clubbing with Donald Trump than with Hillary Clinton. That’s how it was.
Silvio Berlusconi, without a doubt, he must have been a fantastic guy to go clubbing with. Likeable and charismatic, on more than one occasion he stated that his success was due to the fact that the Italians (I think it is not risky to say that he was referring above all to men) saw him as one of them: nice, funny, soccer fan and the party, and what to say about his vision of women. Berlusconi won the Champions League he founded a party that he baptized as a soccer song and won the elections. He had the invaluable help of a television empire that triumphed with a model (let’s call her Mama Chicho) which he later successfully exported to Spain. His scandals corruption, legal convictions for prostitution of minors, tax fraud and corruption? peccadillos. His policies of him as prime minister? Another beer please.
Berlusconi was a precursor to the rise of populists that characterizes this first quarter of the 21st century. Its parallels with Trump are evident (who knows how far the ‘Cavaliere’ would have gone in its ‘prime’ in a world of social networks) and his imprint can be found today on the left and right in the way politicians relate to society. Because the political Berlusconi will be liked more or less (his liberalism, his rightism, his rude ways…) but, who doesn’t want to be liked? What politician doesn’t want to be perceived as likeable and authentic, to be the guy with whom the voters would go wild? And who wants to be considered boring, ashen, angry, a bird of bad omen? Ask Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Ione Belarra, for example.
For a Berlusconi to succeed, it was necessary an enormous prior work of trivializing public discourse. What makes his case worth studying is that he and his television empire contributed like no one else to it. Behind him, another guy with whom to have a laugh while you add beers, Beppe Grillo, he was propelled from media to political stardom using the same springboard. The nice and authentic ones succeed in conversations at the bar, between beers and patatas bravas, and on the other hand they suffer when they have to organize a speech or let alone a coherent policy. Personally, I would go with Bush; but the charge of a policy against the climatic emergency (or of managing the worst terrorist attack that the United States ever suffered in its territory) would have been given to Gore. The problems begin when both things are mixed.
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The history of mass communication is closely related to political communication and the health of the democratic system. Show business created show politics, and from there Berlusconi emerged. The world of social networks it created the politics of impermeable bubbles and the facts themselves, and out of this magma emerged Trump. As we wonder who we’d go clubbing with, public conversation degrades. Do you want to know if populism and demagogues will emerge on the left and right? See what and how is discussed in the political debate.
Who would you go with? With Ayuso or with Íñigo Errejón? With Pedro Sánchez or with Alberto Núñez Feijóo? With Carles Puigdemont or with Salvador Illa? With Yolanda Díaz or with Irene Montero? Silvio Berlusconi’s victory is that this question seems much more attractive to our politicians and their strategists than who we prefer to govern us in times of war or who we think will better regulate the housing market. There is no dilemma of the chicken or the egg: the senders of political discourse have degraded the message that reaches the receivers. They all want citizens to want to have a beer with them, and they treat us accordingly. It is Silvio’s great legacy: they want to be like him.