In 1960, when the young Democrat John F. Kennedy faced Republican Richard Nixon in a public debate, Americans who heard the exchanges on the radio agreed that he had lost, while television viewers, impressed by his physical appearance, said he had lost. They believed the winner. In this way the showboating of politics which soon spread throughout the rest of the world, both democratic and dictatorial. Now, everyone knows that a good image is worth more than a great government program and that it is better to look capable than to be capable. This is one reason why, in many countries, current leaders are considered inferior to those of several generations ago.
Needless to say, Argentina has not been immune to this phenomenon. Before the two presidential debates that have been held, the candidates paid as much attention to their physical appearance as to what they intended to say and understood very well that their gestures – a smile, a grimace, a movement of the head – could influence public opinion more than coherenceor lack thereof, of their statements.
The media and, presumably, the bulk of the immense television audience, believed that, unlike what happened in the first round in Santiago del Estero, in the second Patricia Bullrich acted wellappearing more aggressive and more sure of herself, Sergio Massa seemed to be more vulnerable than before to verbal blows, and Javier Milei hesitated too much without completely blurring.
As to Juan Schiaretti and Myriam Bregman, they dedicated themselves to consuming time that the three main candidates could have taken advantage of. Even so, the role that the outgoing governor of Cordoba is playing is far from unimportant; The alleged owner of 5 percent of the votes, he could determine the immediate future of the country by depriving Bullrich of what he would need and thereby giving Massa a greater possibility of accessing the runoff. It will not be a tacit agreement but rather a perhaps mortifying reality.
Logically, debates should be decisive in which, through the screen, the electorate can become more familiar with the thoughts of the different candidates and see how they behave under pressure, but specialists in the field do not believe that on this occasion the impact is very great. As happens in sports, one’s supporters rejoice in the alleged successes of their favorite and overlook their weaknesses. Those who have benefited most from this propensity have been Milei and Massa; the first because it has the image of being a disruptive outsider that he has set out to blow up the status quo, the other because he has managed to fulfill the role of an upstart without genuine ties to the government that he helped form and of which he has emerged as the undisputed leader. It is an illusion, of course, but, like Milei, Massa understands that a good part of the population wants to break with an order that has been terribly disappointing and, alluding to the radically new story that will finally begin on December 10, he offers to lead the transformation that will erase the past.
At the beginning of the debate, four participants expressed their solidarity with Israel, which had just been the victim of a terrorist attack in which, among other atrocities, members of the jihadist group Hamas, massacred hundreds of young people attending a musical festival, emulating their coreligionists in such a way that, in 2015 at the Bataclan theater in Paris, shouting “Allah Akhbar” (our god is greater) they killed ninety music enthusiasts. rock, beheading some, and with a bomb another did the same in Manchester a year and a half later, where he murdered 22 people, including many teenagers. For the most fanatical Islamists, music is sinful.
To no one’s surprise, Trotskyist Bregman blamed Israel for what was happening, attributing it to the “occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” Like many other ultra-leftists, he takes for granted that Hamas, a group that, based on Koranic concepts, fantasizes about exterminating all Jews, is interested in the fate of Palestinians who, by the way, enjoy more rights in Israel than in any country in the Muslim world.
Those who think like Bregman are wrong. Like the militants of the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and dozens of other like-minded organizations, those of Hamas imagine themselves protagonists of a Manichaean struggle between good and evil that began 1,413 years ago and will not end. until the entire planet has been subjugated to their faith. What they want is not national liberation or the well-being of the Palestinians but the annihilation of a people of another creed that has made its own a piece of land that was previously part of the Islamic world. However, in the West, there are many leftists who take jihadists as allies in the holy war they are waging against capitalism; They forget that, after having contributed to the fall of Shah Reza Pahlavi, the communists and socialists were systematically and brutally eliminated by the ayatollahs. As Lenin would have said, this is what usually happens to useful idiots.
Argentina has more reasons than any other country in the region to feel disturbed by the new outbreak of jihadist hate towards not only the Jewish people but also everything that knows Western culture. It has already been the scene of two bloody attacks, that of the Israeli embassy followed by that of the AMIA, and there is no guarantee that there will not be more. It is a fantasy to believe, as so many leftists and some Kirchnerists would like to make you think, that if the Jewish inhabitants of Israel disappeared from the face of the Earth, which would surely happen if the government assumed a pacifist stance, no one in the rest of the world would would have to worry about religiously rooted extremism.
Fortunately, those inclined to minimize the threat posed by jihadist barbarism, insisting that it is all the fault of the only Jewish State, constitute a squalid minority. Although it would seem that Cristina, for reasons that Justice will have to try to clarify, came dangerously close to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which finances and gives military aid to Hamas and Hezbollah, neither Massa nor the ghostly president Alberto Fernández have tried to find excuses for the savagery of the surprise attack that in a single day caused a thousand mostly civilian deaths. It was the cruelest massacre that the Jewish people have suffered since the Nazi Holocaust.
Those who represent more than 95 percent of the population are, so to speak, “Westernists.” It seems obvious to them that, to recover from the very serious self-inflicted wounds which has forced it to enter intensive care, Argentina will have to strengthen ties with North America, Europe and Israel, although, with the alleged exception of Milei, they are aware that it would be in their best interest to maintain a good economic relationship with China that , despite its serious problems, will continue to be a very significant part of the globalized order. Likewise, they are not at all attracted to the notion that capitalism is terrible and that therefore an alternative must be invented; Although Massa is in charge of the result of Kirchnerism’s extravagant effort to do so, when it comes to the economy he is at least as “rightist” as Patricia Bullrich.
Thus, the options before the electorate are three; the “jump into the void” crazy liberal that Milei hopes to provoke, the orderly but very rapid transition that Bullrich promises and a presumably similar one, which he believes would have the reluctant but important support of Peronism and the affiliated unions, which Massa hints at.
Although Milei remains the favorite to win the top prize in national politics, to govern for more than a couple of tumultuous months he would need the help of the redeemable part of “the caste”; behind the scenes, macristas and people around Massa suggest that they would be willing to give him a hand, which makes Bullrich very angry that, unless the scandals carried out by people like Insaurralde, Julio “Chocolate” Rigau and other colleagues end up sinking the minister-candidate Massa, she will soon be eliminated from the short list of presidential candidates.
In that case, the option before the country would be between Milei and Massa, which, needless to say, would be very uninspiring as it would be a question of choosing between a notoriously volatile man and a professional politician who, in climbing to the presidency, has never hesitated. in associating with characters who are extremely corrupt, that is, with parasitic “jets” that have turned the political world into a sewer. That he has come this far, defying the laws of gravity and without the firm support of a well-articulated political movement, it is a real miracle. It would also be if it managed to survive the new exchange rate run that is convulsing the financial market and the corruption scandals that are proliferating in its natural habitat, but it would seem that the electorate is so traumatized that the political norms that are usually respected in other countries do not apply here. latitudes.
