Berlusconi - The Latest

At the risk of changing this blog's name to Berlusconi Watch, here's some more news on Italy's embarrassment:

• He believes that Rupert Murdoch is waging a vendetta against him because Italy's government (i.e., Berlusconi) doubled the VAT on Murdoch's Sky Italia network.
• He appears to make Bill Clinton look like a eunuch by comparison.
• He needs to grow the hedges a bit higher at his villa in Sardinia.

There's a simple solution to the first issue: put your businesses in a blind trust while you hold office.

Despite his behavior, he keeps getting put in office. This article may have the best explanations, but here's one of the compelling reasons:

Today, there is no ideology and no network; there is only Mr. Berlusconi, and you are either with him or against him. Compared to the old order, Mr. Berlusconi’s political class is seen as a modernizing force. Mr. Berlusconi’s rivals accuse him of being on the wrong side of the law, and he in turn accuses them of being on the wrong side of history. Those two things shouldn’t cancel each other out, but often do.

The members of the Italian left have been infighting since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and are so weak and ineffective today that some in this land of byzantine conspiracy theories believe that Mr. Berlusconi must be paying them off.

There's precious little alternative to him, sad to say.