Grillo Grilled by Times Reporters, a Tasty Presentation

Just for the record: In response to Liz Alderman and Elisabetta Povoledo's adulatory profile of Beppe Grillo in today's Times, I copy here the comment I submitted. Grillo's seduction of Povoledo and Alderman is of a piece with his seduction of much of Italy--but seduction makes for dangerous politics. 

"At last a Times writer realizes that Grillo is not a 'comic' but a serious leader. But she misses a major point. Right now the M5S, Grillo, and his strategist Gianroberto Casaleggio need to make a choice. Option 1: They can make a pact to form a short-term government with the Democrats (who actually got the most votes--easy to forget) and push through a whole set of desperately needed reforms (anti-corruption laws, a rational electoral system, and more) already supported by both parties. Bersani and Vendola have put this deal transparently on the table, and are heaped with puerile insults in return. Or Option 2: Grillo and the M5S can abstain from any constructive cooperation, plunge the government into chaos (or force a corrupt coalition including Berlusconi into office), and then hope to seize complete control when the government collapses and new elections are held. While some may call Option 2 'democratic,' I'd call it putschist--any real democrat would be negotiating to make Option 1 work."

What Now?

The Italian voters have spoken—but what on earth did they say?

Two clear winners were anointed yesterday. First, Beppe Grillo, whose M5S placed first at 25% with the slogan “send them home,” retire all the old guard politicians and replace them with citizen-legislators. And second, Silvio Berlusconi, the oldest of the old guard, the embodiment of everything Grillo and his followers railed against. So having yoked together this improbable pair, can the Italian voters honestly expect the state to move forward in any direction whatsoever?

Well, the drover charged with that task for the moment is the technical ‘winner,’ Pier Luigi Bersani, whose center-left alliance won a razor-thin plurality and will thus, under Italy’s bizarre election system, have a working majority in the Camera and the chance to form a government. But with nothing close to a workable majority in the Senate—even with Monti’s handful of centrist senators Bersani comes up 20 votes short—how long will that government last?

Several implausible scenarios remain technically possible.

• Berlusconi has already called for the ‘grand coalition’ (with Bersani and Monti) which would create a numerical majority. Neither Bersani nor Monti seems likely to disgrace himself with such a deal, but people (like me) who consider Berlusconi politically dead are repeatedly surprised when the zombie walks.
• Alternatively, the PD could call for new elections. This was the first reaction of the Democratic Party’s deputy secretary Enrico Letta yesterday, but he was quickly walked back. In time there may be no other choice, but Italy seems likely to pay a steep price in borrowing costs–and angst–if it has to launch new elections.
• Most intriguingly, a working relationship could develop between Bersani’s center-left and the Grillini in both houses to produce some of the reforms Italy so desperately needs. This was the immediate response yesterday of Bersani’s leftist partner, Nichi Vendola, who pointed to a long list of progressive proposals roughly shared by the two groups. Grillo himself this morning declared himself open to case-by-case consideration of reform bills emanating from Bersani’s putative government.

Could such a governing alliance between an old-school political party and this self-described ‘tsunami’ of anti-political populism actually function? The odds are against it, but the very possibility points to some fascinating ambiguities in Grillo’s movement.

One notable point is that Grillo’s long march had its base in left-populist challenges to the financial and business establishment, on behalf of dispossessed workers and farmers. More recently the M5S has opened itself to the right with anti-immigrant pronouncements and doubts about Italy’s remaining in the Eurozone. But it could be argued that Grillo’s base has anti-corporate leftist inclinations, is in fact a disenchanted remnant of Italy’s traditional Left, and would not be entirely out of place in an enlarged center-left coalition.

But that question raises a more fundamental one: who are the 160 or so new legislators M5S is sending to the new parliament, and what will they do when they get there? Fact 1: Beppe Grillo will not be one of them. Because he strongly insists that no one with a criminal record should sit in parliament, and because he himself carries a conviction for vehicular manslaughter, he has barred himself from serving. The folks who did find places on the M5S lists by way of a thinly participatory on-line ‘primary election’ are … unknown. Novices. Amateurs by design. This is new territory for a legislative body—even those Tea Partiers who flooded Washington in 2010 tended to have been locally active Republicans.

Of course the expected answer is, they’ll do what Grillo says. That’s been the norm for M5S, a one-man operation with one voice, one world-view, one trademark owned by that one person, no internal discussion, no platform committee, no process. When several local movement activists complained about the absence of internal debate last fall, they were promptly purged, i.e., legally enjoined from using the proprietary M5S logo.

This may seem odd coming from Grillo, who has identified himself with internet freedoms, the ‘copyleft’ commons idea, and the diffuse democracy of social media. M5S grew up as a network of local working groups, and has attracted the young people, elsewhere organized in Pirate Parties, who understand the on-line world to be a free preserve. Grillo’s meteoric rise has been linked to the ‘virtual piazza’ as a new forum for democratic expression. Will these self-recruited M5S legislators go to Rome in order to follow his top-down orders, or will they practice a form of horizontal democracy seen most recently in the Occupy movements, with which they share a visible affinity?

In short, M5S is riven by an enormous contradiction: on one hand, the authoritarian Grillo, whose famous blog is a personal platform and not a forum, and whose performances in actual piazzas are sometimes compared to Mussolini’s. On the other, his movement, which thrives in the ‘virtual piazza’ and may be inventing a highly decentralized, very new form of democracy powered by technologies that hardly existed five years ago. Can that New Italy somehow find terms of coexistence in Rome with the more tepid renewals proposed by the Bersani-Vendola coalition, while fully 30% of the voters still long for the archaic corruption and demagoguery of Berlusconi?

More than likely, this house of cards will collapse within weeks and Italians will be asked to vote once more. Who can guess what they will do then? Can the ECB and the Eurozone withstand this turbulence? The stakes are high. But I do think that the most durable effect of Sunday’s election may be the emergence of this new electronic post-partisan form of democratic participation embodied not in Beppe Grillo but in his hosts of anonymous followers.

[cross-posted at fistfulofeuros.net on February 26]

Jiminy Cricket, It's Grillo!

It's Grillo, isn't it? After all my wishful thinking that the Italian election would be about Bersani-Vendola and the center-left's resistance to Merkel, the ECB, and austerity doomsday policies ... by Monday, none of that will matter, will it? All my efforts to downplay this blowhard comedian with his crude rhetoric and atavistic notions ... useless, niente, nada. As Beppe Severgnino put it in the Corriere a couple days ago: "Whoever wins, this will be remembered as Grillo's election."

So I'm resigning myself to a 20%+ showing from Grillo, an effectively deadlocked parliament, an ungovernable Italy (again). And better late than never, I'm learning what I can about the Grillo phenomenon, starting with this article by a couple of professors at the University of Urbino. It's smart, comprehensive, and ... it's in English. Have a look.

Rounding the Last Pole

[Cross-posted today at A fistful of Euros]
Launched in an act of treachery that brought down Mario Monti's technocratic government, the Italian national election campaign will end one way or another, to the relief of many, Saturday evening. What might have been a sustained debate on the merits of austerity measures in a prolonged recession, on the future of Italian employment and its welfare state or a host of other pressing issues, has instead taken on the quality of an unsavory burlesque revue. Its stars: authentic if acerbic comic Beppe Grillo, whose 5 Stars protest movement may yet shape the outcome, and sick joker Silvio Berlusconi, whose foolish headline grabs have used up much of the electoral space. But it has been a lavish, large-cast production, with indictments flying, old allies back-stabbing, off-color jokes and evanescent affiliations, a Fellini-esque procession of oddities and crudities unworthy of the noble republic Italy could nonetheless become.

What to expect? Given Italy's ban on published polls in the final two weeks, calling this one from Boston is something like watching a horse race through the wrong end of the binoculars--but I'm going to do it anyway. Bersani and the center-left have led all the way, notwithstanding the Monte dei Paschi banking scandal that implicates Monti as much as Bersani, and neither man in any direct way. Bersani's campaign has been steady if utterly unflamboyant; he conveys an avuncular credibility that makes it hard to brand him a flaming radical despite Berlusconi's many tries. He has sought international credibility in Berlin and in the American press, and has scrupulously balanced his attachments to rising centrist Matteo Renzi on his right and leftist but circumspect Nichi Vendola to his left. Nothing suggests that Bersani will be dislodged from the #1 spot, and thus control of the lower house.

But can he form a stable government? That's a question about the Senate, and really about 2 or 3 key regions that will decide it: Lombardy, Sicily, maybe Campania. This interesting poll predicts a one-vote plurality for the center-left: it may be a long night for Pier Luigi. If he falls short, Monti's centrist coalition acquires what corporate types call a 'golden seat' at the table, with considerable leverage over fiscal policy.

But Monti himself has been the great disappointment of the season. All the EU heavies have lobbied for him, with possibly negative effect. Italian voters may respect him but don't seem to like him, and his campaign has never achieved lift-off. With fewer distractions this could be the real story of the campaign: even Italy's desperate straits and Monti's exemplary financial credentials are not enough to sell austerity to a chronically hurting electorate--liberal politicians throughout Europe, beware! As I've noted elsewhere, Monti's persistent efforts to split Bersani from Vendola have miserably failed, and Monti has lurched from accomodation to hostility to a final call for a renewed 'grand coalition.' He may yet find himself part of one, but no thanks to his nondescript political skills.

Vendola, meanwhile, has shown himself to be a team player, capable of flashes of wit such as this wonderful Tweet. He has hewed to a steady left line, insisting that workers' rights and the full social safety net must be cornerstones of any 'reform', but like Bersani he seems a lot less scary than his right-wing detractors would prefer. Look for Vendola in a prominent place in Bersani's government.

But will Grillo's anti-political movement obtain an intractable bloc in the new Parliament? Populist protests are notoriously hard to measure, though Grillo's internet-savvy and personally charismatic style have made an indisputable and perhaps permanent impact. My own hunch is that on Sunday Grillo may underperform, losing a share of his 15% to that other discreet contender, Abstention. This shadow-candidate is thought to command 30% already, and I wonder: instead of showing their disdain for politics by going out to vote for Grillo, why won't a fair proportion of his supporters send the same message by staying home? Well, maybe because they love Beppe--we'll see.

In any case, Berlusconi's faux-populism can't hold a candle to Grillo's real deal. The Cavalier still stands to win a substantial fraction--25%?--but without Grillo he would have had a better chance to harvest the broad dissatisfaction with Monti. Why this cadaverous has-been still gets even 1% is a mystery to me, but I remain confident that he will be shut out of any new government. Why? Because he is pure poison.

So I'm among the few who wait optimistically for Monday's verdict. Last spring I hoped Hollande would feel empowered to contest Merkel's disastrous orthodoxy. I noted the brief but surprising flourish of the Dutch Socialists last fall; I observe Alexis Tsipris's recent arrival on the main stage, and sense a gathering change of mood in much of Europe, perhaps in time for next year's Euro-elections. A Bersani-Vendola government would move the Old Continent a few more cautious steps in that direction. Avanti!

Euro-lover Jilted!

Maybe it was the photo of the happy de facto couple (see yesterday's post). Or maybe, as he noted in Rome yesterday, Monti wants a shot at directing traffic himself, rather than letting Bersani have all the fun. Whatever the reason, it looks like it's all off between Monti and the center-left: "With this left-wing coalition I don't have and never will have anything in common," he huffily declared.

But Mario, can this really be the end, after all our hopes and dreams? Of course not. These daily games of push-and-pull are, as I've said, the vital center of this campaign, as Monti and Vendola jockey for position in the new government. Right now Vendola may be a few lengths ahead--that is the real point of Monti's remarks. But whether Bersani can afford to let him walk away depends on whom the voters in Lombardy and Sicily choose to send to the Senate, and we won't know that for a few days more.

So Mario, don't throw out those long-stemmed roses--your courting days may not be over yet.

The Even Couple

The hour of gay marriage has not yet arrived in Italy, unlike France, various of the United States, and a handful of other countries around the world. That hasn't stopped Nichi Vendola from enjoying life in a long-term couple, nor from being the object of homophobic taunts from the Cavaliere and others. But in this charming tweet, where he labels himself and and his pal Pier Luigi a "de facto couple" (unless there is some nuance to the phrase I'm missing), he not only makes a well-aimed political point about the center-left alliance, but he shows that he at least, and Bersani too, are relaxed enough to have a little chuckle about the 'gay thing.'

He gets a perfect "10" on my scorecard.

Traffic Cop

Just as an addendum to yesterday's long post: everywhere he goes Bersani is asked about how it would be to govern with both Vendola and Monti on the team, and today, with his penchant for metaphor unabated, he had a clear answer: "The [Democratic Party] primaries determined who directs the traffic, and if the problem arises, I'll take care of it."

Meanwhile Bersani's nuanced endorsement of Vendola--"He knows what it is to govern and what sorts of compromises are necessary"--was exceeded by Vendola's own mash note to the Secretary: "a competent and passionate administrator ... and a stand-up guy [persona perbene]."

We'll see soon enough who gets the right-of-way ...