The divorce battle in the House of Berlusconi and the gossip over an underage confidante has put the Italian prime minister on the defensive -- a feat the opposition has never managed to achieve.
The man is nervous. He seems agitated, fanning his perspiring face with documents. As he talks, looking tired and irritable, he lacks his trademark smile. He seems to be waging an inner battle. On a screen above his head is a larger-than-life image of his wife Veronica. It makes him seem small.
When Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, nickname Il Cavaliere, appeared last week on Italy's almost-daily talk show "Porta a Porta" (Door to Door), he knew that he, the otherwise omnipotent politician, had strayed somewhat off course.
Instead, as Berlusconi knows, he's made a mistake that is unforgivable for a populist: He has carelessly ignored the people, paying no heed to the opinions of women, Catholics and his own, recently founded party, The People of Freedom (Il Popolo della Liberta, PdL). For the first time after months of wielding his power with seeming indifference, Berlusconi faces the possibility of losing popular support.
It is this prospect that drives him to endure the torment of appearing on the talk show and to fight for his image as if fighting for his survival. "This is the way I am; I cannot change my nature," he says, waiting for applause from the studio audience.
But will they clap?
The whole country is familiar with the details of Berlusconi's supposedly spontaneous, fleeting visit to a party to celebrate Noemi Letizia's 18th birthday. The event has become fodder for satirical TV shows and websites, and the key passages from an interview Letizia gave to a local paper are now recited in every bar. "He is like a second papa to me," she said. "He raised me. I have never gossiped about this strong friendship with Papi Silvio." Berlusconi, Letizia said in the interview, had been unfailing in his "attentiveness," even giving her a diamond on one occasion and a little gold chain on another.
For some, and certainly Veronica Lario-Berlusconi, Letizia's words probably evoked memories of a certain White House intern during the Clinton years. Is Noemi Letizia Il Cavaliere's Monica Lewinsky? "I worship him," she told her interviewer. "I keep him company. He calls me and tells me when he has a bit of time, and I go to him. I stay and I listen to him. That's what he wants me to do. Then we sing songs together." Including: "Mon amour, lalalala."
The implication is that anyone who could possibly think ill of Berlusconi's friendship with Letizia must be a scoundrel indeed. What could be more normal than an 18-year-old girl from Portici singing and joking around with the Italian prime minister?
The story of a 72-year-old prime minister at the pinnacle of his power and an 18-year-old girl from a Naples suburb has turned into a political affair. It reminded Veronica Lario-Berlusconi of "virgins sacrificing themselves to the dragon" to propitiate fate. It also prompted her to ask for a divorce, declaring that she could no longer be married to a man "who consorts with minors."
The opposition could hardly believe its good fortune.
Political Rift Through the Bedroom
Italy's most powerful man is on the defensive. Although the fatal rift in the Berlusconi marriage has not changed the balance of power in Italy, the country has grown even more polarized. The deep fracture between devout supporters and bitter foes of the billionaire politician suddenly runs through his own bedroom.
Veronica Lario is already being celebrated as an effective one-woman opposition. None of Berlusconi's political rivals has cornered him with nearly as much success as his wife. Domenico Delle Foglie of the Italian daily Corriere della Sera described the prime minister's appearance on "Porta a Porta" as "an unexpected sign of weakness."
RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS Photo Gallery: Silvio Agonistes Divorce alla Berlusconi: Italy's First Couple Wage War of Roses in Media (05/05/2009) Girls, Power and Mamma: How Silvio Berlusconi Became Italy's Superman (03/12/2009) From the Archive: Berlusconi's Extended Honeymoon (10/09/2008) The Vatican, otherwise anything but a detractor of Il Cavaliere, was not amused. Cardinal Walter Kasper, the German president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in the Roman Curia, said: "The prime minister's behavior seems strange, out of order to us." For Italy, the senior church official said, the scandal does not project "an inspiring image of power."
The criticism is almost surprising, given the peepshow-like tales of Berlusconi's sexual appetite that have circulated for years. One classic story relates to a wiretapped phone conversation between him and a special advisor, Marcello Dell'Utri, on New Year's Eve in 1986. After Berlusconi and then Prime Minister Bettino Craxi had been stood up by two showgirls, he complained: "This means we won't be having sex tonight. And if this is the way the year begins, we'll never have sex again."
More than 20 years later, another wiretapped telephone conversation became a hit on YouTube. In the conversation, Berlusconi asked Agostino Sacca, then head of Rai Fiction, an Italian public TV station, for a favor. "You are the only one who has never asked me for anything," Sacca replied, to which Berlusconi replied: "Except for women once in a while, to improve the boss' mood."
Before appointing Mara Carfagna, a former showgirl, to be Minister of Equal Opportunities in May 2008, Berlusconi raved: "If I wasn't already married, I would marry her immediately." The remark prompted comedian Sabina Guzzanti to say, "You can't appoint someone minister for equal opportunity simply because she is sucking your dick." Carfagna, a former Miss Italia contestant, sued Guzzanti for libel.
In almost any other European country, a prime minister like Berlusconi would hardly last 24 hours. "It's as if we constantly re-elected (German pop singer) Dieter Bohlen as chancellor," says Peter Berling, a German actor and author (The Children of the Grail) who has lived in Rome for a long time.
Showgirls in Politics
But Italy is different. The Italians, says Giovanni Sartori, "elected him because they are like him or because they want to be like him." The renowned political scientist recently published a volume of essays titled The Sultanate. According to Sartori, Berlusconi rules Italy like an Oriental potentate, "naming ministers as he sees fit, chasing away whoever he pleases, as if they were servants." Of course, a sultanate needs a harem, says Sartori. "In a psychological sense, the man is always more omnipotent when he can produce a harem."
NEWSLETTER Sign up for Spiegel Online's daily newsletter and get the best of Der Spiegel's and Spiegel Online's international coverage in your In- Box everyday. Members of Berlusconi's party, the PdL, have started to complain about the pasha's personnel policies. In Deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini's web magazine "Farefuturo," doubts have been expressed over whether female candidates whose political experience is as scant as the clothing they wear on TV should be put forward as candidates for European elections.
Showgirls in politics? Berlusconi's wife Veronica, deeply offended by the way a girl she has never met chatted about "Papa Silvio," called her husband's political appointments "shameless rubbish in the name of power."
Veronica Lario says she doesn't believe Letizia's interview was just an example of the girl's naiveté. Letizia has always dreamed of a career as a velina, or showgirl, and started posting alluring pictures of herself on Facebook at 16. As early as 2007 the prime minister's wife said in an interview that she had been considering divorce "for years." She was tired of the constant humiliation by her husband's excesses. One recent example: The prime minister, while visiting the scene of an earthquake in the central Italian town of L'Aquila, made an unmistakable offer to a local female politician, Lia Beltrami. "Can I fondle you?" he asked, perhaps unaware he was being filmed.
Veronica and Silvio Berlusconi live separate lives, he with his entourage at a villa in Arcore, near Milan, and she in nearby Macherio. The lawyers call it "divorce, Italian style" -- a de facto separation, but one that preserves the façade of marriage.
It worked until April 30, 2009, when Veronica Lario discovered nude photos of herself on the cover page of Libero, a newspaper that is certainly closer to her husband than she is.
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