The “quirinabili” of the center-right and the lost time of the True Liberals in the court of the left
Yesterday there were rumors and rumors that Silvio Berlusconi's candidacy for the presidency of the Republic has already vanished. In fact, the Cav has very little chance of becoming the next tenant of the Quirinale, due to the difficulty of aggregating votes outside the center-right parties, necessary to achieve an absolute majority in the fourth ballot. On the other hand, it is also true that among all the names that circulate it is the one that could start with the highest number of votes on paper. He would lack about sixty votes and from here on everything could happen …
Always, of course, that he really has the support of the entire center-right. And that is precisely the point. Only for the outcry of the left in recent days – which for the occasion has dusted off an anti-Berlusconism of yesteryear, which seemed definitively buried with the rehabilitation of the Cav as a barrier to the sovereignists – the center-right parties should carry on almost on principle the Berlusconi's candidacy. But obviously, someone in the center-right has other plans. Salvini seems to be convinced that with Draghi at the Quirinale he would have thrown open the doors of Palazzo Chigi in case of victory in 2023. We would not bet a euro (on the victory, let alone on the entrance to Chigi). In any case, the superfine "strategists" at work do not seem to realize that their "plans B" have any chance of success only if Berlusconi's candidacy holds up to the last, that is, up to the fourth vote, and the left is forced to deal with it for real.
From the background of these hours, the impression is that Denis Verdini is already sending any draft of the strategy of the center-right for the Quirinale. It is unlikely that Berlusconi would be willing to support with the same energy a candidate from the center-right area other than himself, or Mario Draghi himself, whom the Cav (like the Democratic Party) wants very strongly to keep at Palazzo Chigi. And who will be called, as usual, to pick up the pieces? Gianni Letta, convincing Berlusconi that there are no alternatives to a leftist figure, of course one who is able to offer him guarantees, and that the sooner he makes the best of a bad situation, the better. A script that has already been seen not only in the last decade, but throughout Berlusconi's twenty years.
If these considerations of ours are well founded, the center-right has already liquefied and will come out with broken bones from the race for the Quirinale.
The problem with the center-right, in our opinion, is that it is now a ghost coalition. It governs many regions, but only because the direct election of the presidents of the region favors coalitions and the holding of majorities. At the national level, the parties that should be part of the center-right not only have not governed together for 11 years, but on closer inspection in these 11 years they have not even been together with the opposition: some in fact have joined left-wing governments or they supported them.
It takes a lot of optimism to think that the same leaderships that have failed miserably in identifying winning candidates for the last administrative, in two key cities like Rome and Milan, are able to aggregate today around a personality with a chance of success and to support it until to the election to the Colle.
For Alberto Mingardi, as he explained in yesterday's article entitled "The center-right and lost time" , in Corriere della Sera , the problem of the center-right in the election of the next President of the Republic lies in the lack of "quirinabile" area figures . After thirty years, argues Mingardi, the center-right has no "personalities that can be considered at the height of the Hill", who "enjoy if not the sympathy at least the respect of those on the other side". The center-right parties "have failed to grow a self-produced political class". The sovereign and populist line would have "advised many, academics, professionals or entrepreneurs, to stay away". The "proximity" to the center-right parties "is still experienced today as a sort of stain on the curriculum".
To weigh is the "absence of a perspective", of "a nucleus of principles". "Very good at taking the votes", the center-right leaders do not know how to "affect the country and its apparatuses" one minute after winning the elections.
On Atlantico Quotidiano we have never been kind to the center-right parties, we have not spared even ferocious criticism. The lack of perspective, the weakness of principles, the inability to affect the country and its apparatuses once in government are serious handicaps that we have repeatedly stressed and are fully convinced of. But they are only part of the problem, and not even the most relevant, when it comes to the lack of political class and area personalities that can be "quirinable".
In this, we observe it with esteem and friendship but with frankness, Mingardi's analysis is seriously omissive.
First of all, is it really true that the center-right does not have “quirinabili” area personalities? This risks being a premise taken too much for granted and the result of political bias. If we go through the names that are circulating only in these days, therefore without too much effort, we find the president of the Senate Casellati, the former president of the Casini Chamber, the former president of the Senate Marcello Pera, the former minister of foreign affairs and new president of the Council of State Franco Frattini, and again Gianni Letta and Letizia Moratti. But why not think – and it is surprising that a liberal like Mingardi didn't even think of it – two true liberals like Antonio Martino and Carlo Nordio? As for Berlusconi himself: a certainly "biased" figure, whose institutional responsibility and pro-European faith are now also recognized by his opponents – unless this recognition is sincere but instrumental.
Now, we can discuss at length about the chances that these personalities would have of being elected, which largely depend on the will of the center-right parties to find an agreement and on the ability to support their candidacy in front of other political forces. But this is a difficulty that the Democratic Party would also have, divided as it is internally, with its own names. We all remember the end of Romano Prodi's candidacy in 2013.
Wouldn't the aforementioned center-right personalities be “at the height of the Hill”? We do not express judgments on individuals, but we limit ourselves to observing that they would be at least as good as the leftists who are mentioned in these days. No less "biased", no less prepared.
The real point of the question seems to be that in a media and cultural landscape strongly hegemonized by the left, with institutional leaders and state apparatuses occupied by the left for at least a decade, it is the left that distributes patents of political respectability and "quirinability", a an aspect that should not escape an attentive observer like Mingardi. The "quirinabili" of the center-right area have nothing to envy to those of the left, if not that they do not have the card of the Democratic Party.
As another political fact should not escape: if there are very few, perhaps none, the center-right personalities who enjoy "at least the respect of those on the other side", it is above all for the incessant recourse to delegitimization and demonization of the adversary on the part of the left, which seems to recognize a certain degree of respect for its opponents only when electorally harmless – always revocable respect, as we see these days with Berlusconi.
Therefore, the fundamental question must be asked: who decides if a personality is "quirinabile" and worthy of the respect of the adversaries? Of course, if Corriere , Repubblica and Stampa decide, we will find very few among the ranks of the center-right.
And from here we connect to the other theme touched upon in Mingardi's article: the many academics, professionals or entrepreneurs who prefer to "stay away" from political commitment in center-right parties, because the "proximity" with that political area is experienced as a "stain in the curriculum". There is some truth, but even in this case, we should ask ourselves why without omissions or convenient answers. Is it the fault of the sovereign and populist line? Of course, as it was also violently demonized by the establishment. But can we really attribute only to the sovereign and populist line of the last five years the lack of academics, professionals or entrepreneurs in the political class of the center-right, or even of “quirinable” figures, which as you know require a decantation of many more years? If so, with its pro-European and “institutional” line Forza Italia in recent years would have had to completely renew its ruling class and its parliamentary groups. Which obviously did not happen.
Mingardi himself in his article recalls a time, in the 90s, when the center-right brought thinkers of the caliber of Miglio and Colletti, but also technicians and entrepreneurs to Parliament. The so-called season of the professors. Of course, they were pushed aside, somehow overshadowed also by Berlusconi's charismatic leadership.
But that very season shows how the problem does not arise today with the sovereign and populist line. To the difficulties of coexistence with a leader like Cavaliere, others followed, which bring us back to demonization, to the lifelong mark on anyone who dared to side with Berlusconi at the time, and on anyone who dares today with Salvini and Meloni. That center-right, that Forza Italia, which brought important personalities into Parliament in many fields, were demonized by the left, the media and the establishment of the time, exactly as sovereignists and populists are demonized today, to the point of denying them the legitimacy to aspire to roles. institutional. Not from today the center-right has difficulty in indicating their personalities for the election to the Quirinale.
But do we remember the treatment reserved for academics, professionals and entrepreneurs – often coincidentally with a liberal orientation – who approached the Berlusconian center-right? Very often it meant ghettoization in one's environment, ending up in the media mincer, putting one's academic career or major orders on the line: essentially losing respectability in the salons that matter. This was true twenty years ago with the Berlusconian center-right, today it is true with Salvini and Meloni. Not to mention the very high risk of ending up in the crosshairs of the judiciary. The mechanism that distances certain personalities from a political commitment in the center-right parties has been the same for over twenty years.
So, if the political class of the center-right is what it is (but frankly on the left we don't seem to see Nobel prizes) it is also due to the lack of courage of academics, professionals and entrepreneurs, especially those who define themselves as liberals , who prefer not to get dirty. your hands, do not lose the “right” entries, do not risk some sub-government or consultancy posts, some funding, the rubricetta or editorial collaboration. In short, they prefer to remain in the court of the left and in the warmth of the establishment and from there, if anything, pontificate on the evils that afflict the right.
Sooner or later, they will have to deal with a fact: the pro-European "Competence", not the vulgar right, has led the country for nine of the last ten years, it does not seem to us with brilliant results, much less liberal. Only in the last year, with Mario Draghi at Palazzo Chigi, the competent one par excellence, has the country experienced the most disturbing illiberal and statist drift in republican history, with deep wounds that are difficult to heal to property rights and personal freedoms.
The post The “quirinabili” of the center-right and the lost time of the True Liberals in the court of the left appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/i-quirinabili-del-centrodestra-e-il-tempo-perduto-dei-veri-liberali-alla-corte-della-sinistra/ on Wed, 19 Jan 2022 03:47:00 +0000.