Berlusconi was proof a suspiciously white smile can take you a long way

How do you analyse a man like Silvio Berlusconi?

It’s like catching water – so much to grasp and it all ends up mixed together. The businessman, the politician, the rogue, the perma-tanned smile on legs. The charismatic seducer.

Perhaps that’s really the key to grasping what Mr Berlusconi did, and how he did it. The twinkle in the eye that started as a youth and helped him prosper as a young singer on the cruise ships. He was comfortable with people, happy to smile, chat, charm and mingle.

‘Many loved him, many hated him’ – reaction

And it turned out that what worked for him then just kept on succeeding. When he entered the world of business, charm and chat flowered into persuasion and deal-making.

His media empire was built on a cleverly exploited loophole – banned from launching a TV network that could broadcast across the whole country, he simply bought up local stations throughout Italy and got them to show the same programmes at the same time.

And his programmes were more glitzy than the public broadcaster – Mr Berlusconi brought Dallas and Dynasty to Italy.

His hunch, then and later, was that he knew what people wanted and they would support him if he gave it to them.

“I know how to make people love me,” he was to state one day.

And that, perhaps, was the touchstone of his political philosophy – that Italy could trust him, with not too many questions answered.

Because deal-making, Berlusconi-style, always raised a few questions that caused problems – the persistent links to criminals, the claims of fraud, the personal indiscretions.

He faced at least 35 criminal cases and said he’d lost count of the number of days he’d spent in court.

Other charges may have been curtailed when, as prime minister, he changed the rules over the statute of limitations, just as he changed other laws that benefited his business dealings.

In retrospect, it was extraordinary that he did these things and so many people just shrugged and said “that’s Silvio Berlusconi”.

But he did, and they did. Charm was his greatest strength, albeit it came allied with the scandals about his private life.

Even in Italy, there are only so many scandals that a politician can endure.

He was not the complete package, by any means. For a businessman who had built himself a huge fortune at a speed that impressed, stunned, and raised suspicion in equal numbers, his grasp of political economics was iffy, at best.

In the early years of the century, when other countries were investing for the future, Italy, under Mr Berlusconi, was sluggish. When the global financial crisis was brewing, he was blase while others were proactive. The sovereign debt crisis that followed seemed to completely bewilder him.

A man for the good times, not for the struggle

Not only that, but it showed him up. Mr Berlusconi’s political career had been built on smiles, sunshine, showbiz and support. He was a man for the good times, not for the struggle. Some leaders rise to the occasion when the country is in crisis. He did not, shrinking when he had to deliver bad news or call for calm.

He was not a man for the details, but for the intoxication of the bigger picture – the glory yet to come, the better future.

Long before Donald Trump proclaimed that he would make America great again, Mr Berlusconi was channelling much the same rhetoric. He was later, with no hint of irony, to castigate Mr Trump as “too arrogant”.

In many ways, Mr Berlusconi foreshadowed Mr Trump – a high-profile billionaire with a big smile who stormed into politics with next to no experience, took the top job and promised to transform the country on behalf of the working people with whom, despite his riches, he professed kinship and understanding.

And, like Mr Trump, he divided opinion.

“50% of Italians love, 50% hate me,” he once noted.

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In fact, in Italy’s complicated, multi-party political arena, he never actually earned that level of support, but his point is valid. Like Mr Trump, he knew the value of placing yourself at the heart of a nation’s cultural conversation – nobody was indifferent towards Mr Berlusconi.

He declared his admiration for Benito Mussolini, but also said he was pro-Israel.

He hosted three G8 conferences but also ended up carelessly insulting allies such as Angela Merkel and Barack Obama.

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He befriended Vladimir Putin, but described himself as a Liberal moderate. Albeit, even in death and after his own extraordinary career, it’s quite hard to define exactly what his politics were. It depended, I suppose, on what was happening, and who was asking.

There is a term called “Berlusconism” that is supposed to sum up his political philosophy, but good luck finding an actual definition.

If he was anything, he was a populist who thought that politics were malleable and that, given a following breeze, he could always charm his nation. And for many years, that is exactly what happened. Sometimes, a suspiciously white smile can take you a very long way.

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