Italy’s election. Television drama

Date: 18/03/06

Romano Prodi emerges well ahead from the first televised debate

IT WOULD be ironic if Silvio Berlusconi, the supreme media politician, were to be toppled by television. But after the Italian prime minister's ill-starred televised debate with his centre-left challenger, Romano Prodi, on March 14th, that looks a distinct possibility. Within 24 hours, Mr Berlusconi's main allies had launched fierce attacks on his performance that can only undermine his leadership of the centre-right as it braces for the election on April 9th and 10th. Pier Ferdinando Casini, leader of the Union of Christian Democrats, called it a "missed opportunity". The deputy prime minister, Gianfranco Fini, who leads the National Alliance, said that Mr Berlusconi gave "the impression that all was well" but that floating voters knew "society still has many problems".

Mr Berlusconi himself looked disappointed even before the credits rolled on a tightly regulated duel in which both men were limited to timed answers to identical questions. The prime minister used up precious seconds of his closing address to complain about the format. A journalist reported hearing him mutter "bad, bad, bad" as he left. Mr Prodi, by contrast, positively beamed with satisfaction. Though handicapped by his husky voice, he displayed the more confident body language. Unlike his opponent, he spoke consistently to the camera, and hence to the undecided voters who were the real targets for both candidates. A survey this week suggested that 47% of viewers preferred Mr Prodi, against just 35% for Mr Berlusconi--though the polls also say that a quarter of voters have yet to make up their minds.

Until the debate, issues such as the sick economy had disappeared from the campaign amid rows about Mr Berlusconi's influence over the media and his use of it to talk up his government's record. That tactic backfired in the debate. By concentrating on the past, Mr Berlusconi let his opponent, who was prime minister before he became European Commission president in 1999, come across, rather unusually, as a man of the future.

After a string of attention-grabbing remarks by the prime minister, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ and pledged to give up sex until after the vote, pundits expected some memorable sound-bites. None was forthcoming. "This [was] not the political spectacle to which Silvio has made us accustomed," said Antonio Cornacchione, a comedian who likes to impersonate the prime minister while dressed as Napoleon. His act points to another emerging feature of the campaign. Mr Berlusconi's impudent self-confidence, once his greatest asset, now comes across as self-righteous pig-headedness.

Not the least important point about the television debate was that it put both men on an equal media footing for the first time since they squared off in the 1996 election campaign. Mr Berlusconi's discomfort ten years on was visible. He repeatedly overran his allotted time and ceded to the moderator only with irritated reluctance. Italy's prime minister is not a man who is used to being interrupted.

Nor is he used to being contradicted. On March 12th, he walked out of a television interview in protest over hostile questioning. By staying calm, he might have minimised the damage and even attracted some sympathy in a society that is not used to journalists challenging politicians. Yet the walk-out also suggested that he was a man who considers himself to be above any need to argue his case. Europeans have a long record of unsentimentally discarding leaders they feel may have got carried away by their own importance. It happened to Charles de Gaulle and to Margaret Thatcher. It could equally well happen to Silvio Berlusconi.