Here are Calenda’s challenges and chances
What is said to the right and left about Carlo Calenda. Gianfranco Polillo's analysis
The day after the schism of Carlo Calenda, the comments were not benevolent. The old left, whose cultural weight cannot be doubted, has unleashed commentators and commentators in an attempt to prove the character's unreliability. Too narcissistic and unpredictable to be part of the new National Liberation Committee against the Right. Which, in the end, he will always be able to thank. And here are pages and pages that address the figure of the leader of Action in a psychoanalytic way. They retrace his childhood in the golden salons of Roma bene. The first steps in his career, in the great sanctuaries of Italian capitalism. Until the sghiribizzo of politics.
Easy to read. An alien. One of those men lucky by birth and wealth, who did not have to suffer the pains of hell. Convinced that he can achieve everything. And therefore far from willing to make the necessary compromise. Ultimately a center extremist. Humoral in its sudden changes. Ready to go back even at the cost of not respecting a commitment just signed. The only thing missing is that famous phrase that marked the election campaign against Richard Nixon: "Would you buy a car used by this man?". And then the anthology would be complete.
The left – left (there is always someone purer than the others) instead prefers the big target. The fault of this big mess is only Enrico Letta, thundering in unison, Marco Travaglio and Gad Lerner. He should just resign. In fact, he did not understand that to beat the right one needed the union sacrée of all men of good will. With at the head, of course, Giuseppe Conte and the few troops who had remained loyal to him.
Which had its own reason, being the grillini at least more numerous (it takes little) than the followers of Frantoianni and Bonelli. If politics, in fact, were pure summation of the most varied positions. As this electoral law, which is the craziest in the world, prescribes. Except that Letta is not Bruno Tabacci, whose reckless floating maneuvers are unlikely. Everything could be asked of the old Sciences Po professor, but not to combine, at the same time, the homage to Mario Draghi and the hand extended to those who had, albeit so naively, decreed his end.
On the opposite side, that of the right, the comments are not far behind. But that too was predictable. Do not forget the choices made by Mariastella Gelmini, Mara Carfagna and Renato Brunetta. Those ministers who, faced with the maneuvers of Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi against the Draghi government, have abandoned Forza Italia, arousing the "fatal wrath", sometimes particularly vulgar, of the magic circle of Villa Certosa. Alessandro Sallusti himself, a meek and savvy person (which speaks volumes about his disappointment) is forced to use tones that are not his own. Calenda is a serial liar, he can't even find peace with himself. What confidence voters can have. And so on.
All too easy to see in everything old desired. It was better if Calenda was with Letta. The big one on the left: from Di Maio to Fratoianni and perhaps the Count himself, would have consolidated the opposite front. The betrayal of the Forza Italia refugees demonstrated to the world. By bringing out all the pastism of a left that is unable to get out of its old patterns. By breaking that symmetry, right against left, Calenda has turned into a third wheel whose presence, beyond the polls that, at least in this phase, say little, enlivens the picture.
It is not our job to make predictions. The birth of this new pole, preferably together with Matteo Renzi, however, risks becoming the real novelty of these elections. The two alternative sides, right and left, are the déjà-vu, if not the old one. The main leaders of the two sides (perhaps a little less Giorgia Meloni) display not the medals of success on their chests, but the scars of old failures.
Demonstrating which is not so difficult: from the economy that did not grow before Draghi, to the spiral of public debt, passing through the level of unemployment, to the sharp increase in inequalities and poverty levels, to the stop of the social elevator. An endless list, made even more worrying by the many recent uncertainties about foreign policy. The ambiguous proximity to Putin of Berlusconi and Salvini. Frantoianni and Bonelli who vote against the entry of Finland and Norway into NATO.
How many are there who are tired of those old rituals? Unrealizable promises on the one hand, from excess mediation on the other. That not to change anything except with the agreement of the trade unions, parishes, social centers and so on. So, in the end, the mountain always gives birth to a mouse. In other words – at least this is our feeling – a free vote of opinion, which seeks solutions. Not consoling promises or old certainties in the name of politically correct.
How much it will weigh we cannot say. The clues, however, are not to be overlooked. The social cross-section that emerges from the latest Bank of Italy survey on family income describes a truncated pyramid. With a summit that has seen its level of relative well-being increase and is therefore oriented in favor of simple conservation. And a base which, in turn, thanks to redistributive policies (especially citizenship income) did not go so badly. His heart, if only out of gratitude, will then beat to the left. Undecided between the PD and the 5 stars.
But in the middle of these two extremes is the majority (60/70 percent) of Italians. People who have no saints in heaven, forced to conquer, day after day and with great difficulty, the stationary nature of their income. People who always lack one to make thirty-one. Will everyone vote for Silvio Berlusconi who promises them the same things as in the 1990s? Will Letta follow, reaffirming the combination of “tax and spend”? A patrimonial to give young people a subsidy, instead of a job? Or will they look for a different answer? And then will they spend on a new political representation?
Having put the problem in this way, the reading of the latest events becomes clearer. The more or less imaginative implications of the character's psychology are of little interest. Know who his father or mother was. And what was their job. The important thing is to understand if an urgent request for change is prevalent in Italy, after the great lesson of Mario Draghi. And if the conditions exist so that that opportunity is not wasted in the ebb of abstentions. In turn, a reflection of a political offer that is considered to be very unattractive. We will see it shortly. In the meantime, however, it would be better to avoid the consoling tones of those who would like to chop everything up, turning into a shrink.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/carlo-calenda-sfide/ on Wed, 10 Aug 2022 05:14:48 +0000.