In January 1994, Silvio Berlusconi, a man who had never held political office, appeared on his three television channels to announce a bid to lead Italy. Two months later, he won the election.
It was an astounding achievement, proving that politics had “quite a bit in common with selling soap,” writes Alexander Stille in his insightful and biting book, “The Sack of Rome.” Berlusconi, now 69, had been cultivating his celebrity status for a decade when the political system protecting his media empire crumbled and Milan prosecutors began probing his company for corruption, prompting him to “enter the playing field,” Stille says.
His first government lasted seven months. He returned as prime minister in 2001 and hung onto the job for five years, losing a re-election bid in April by fewer than 25,000 votes.
Stille, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, is a meticulous guide through Berlusconi’s career. He describes the marketing that made him first a household name and then a prime minister, and he underlines the danger to democracy posed by a marriage of wealth, political power and media control. It’s a Machiavellian tale told in clean, direct prose.
This is Stille’s third book on Italy, a country he has written about for more than 20 years. Even for those who know little of Italy, Berlusconi’s story is fascinating. He started out in the 1960s selling household appliances door to door by day and wooing Milanese ladies as a lounge singer by night. Today, he has a net worth of $11 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
In the ’70s, Berlusconi had access to tens of millions of dollars whose origin has never been fully documented, Stille writes. In those years, the author says, Berlusconi invited a member of the Sicilian Mafia to live with him and drive his children to school; he cultivated friendships with men who would later face charges ranging from Mafia membership to bribing judges; and he joined an anti-communist Masonic lodge.
Stille excels at describing Berlusconi’s gift as a salesman, his founding of Mediaset SpA, Italy’s biggest private TV broadcaster, and his leap into politics. Berlusconi immediately grasped the potential of commercial television in Italy, where state-owned channels functioned like government ministries and allowed little advertising.
“He managed to convey the feeling that he was not just selling a product, but offering a vision of a new, better world,” Stille writes.
The book shows how the years that Berlusconi spent building Mediaset into one of Europe’s most profitable broadcasters shaped both his own political persona and that of his electorate. By airing shows such as “Dallas,” Berlusconi rendered “a culture of abundance and excess not only acceptable, but even desirable,” Stille writes. He revolutionized the spending habits of Italians long steeped in Catholic or communist frugality.
Yet Berlusconi’s broadcasting power didn’t mix well with democratic politics, Stille argues: He relentlessly used his media, which extended to state television and radio once he became prime minister, to attack opponents and, more important, prosecutors and judges pursuing corruption charges against him.
Those charges have ranged from bribing tax police and paying off judges to accounting fraud. Berlusconi has always denied any wrongdoing, accusing judges and prosecutors of being motivated by political bias. He has been absolved of all charges, often because the statute of limitations for them had expired. Milan judges are now reviewing allegations by prosecutors for two new corruption charges, both of which Berlusconi denies.
Ultimately, it may have been Berlusconi’s dependence on the media that led to his electoral loss this year, Stille writes. Having failed to keep his campaign promises, Berlusconi couldn’t quite convince voters that he was selling the best soap.
“His deep conviction that everything is a matter of perception made it difficult for him to grasp that it was important for him not just to appear to have done well, but to have actually governed well,” Stille writes.
This is good, detailed journalism, which is rarely seen in Italy. For readers outside Italy, there’s no better introduction to Berlusconi. For Italians who have been bombarded by the billionaire’s media machine, this book uses facts to set the record straight.
The Sack of Rome
How a Beautiful European Country With a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi
By Alexander Stille
Penguin, 384 pages, $25.95
