The vote for the future of America will involve at least two TV duels. Joe Biden and Donald Trump, neck and neck in the latest Reuters poll, have already agreed on a first confrontation on CNN and a second on ABC News. The vote for Italy’s future in Europe will go through who knows what: barring twists and turns, neither the debate between Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, nor that between Matteo Salvini and Giuseppe Conte, nor a debate between the leaders seems possible anymore of all the lists, nor any type of direct, mediated, single or multiple debate between the holders of the different political proposals, whether leaders or non-leaders. It is a colossal proof of democratic inefficiency of our system. It is (we fear) a new demonstration of the lack of courage of the parties because the prohibitive limits that each has placed on the type of meeting proposed by the others means only one thing: fear, fear, desire to leave things as they are and amen, the voters make do. .
The last real political confrontation recorded in our country was the Berlusconi-Prodi of 2006, eighteen years ago, then nothing. This should tell us something about Italian leadership which often presents itself as the holder of a courageous renewal but then, in its intimate essence, holds on to the old Christian Democratic prudences and shy away from open-faced challenges. It is a type of risk avoidance that can only be seen here. In France, Lepen’s Jordan Bardella and Macron’s Valerie Hayer have already clashed live on TV at the beginning of May and will do so again. The televised battles between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen remain memorable, as do those between Angela Merkel and Martin Shultz or between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbin at the time of the Brexit referendum. Everywhere it is normal for the leaders of a party or an alignment to expose themselves to cross-examination with their opponents to provide elements of judgment to the electoral body.
In Italy no, it doesn’t happen. The Number Ones go on television with exaggerated precautions, never face to face with their competitors and always alone with the hosts, in a ritual so predictable that it causes ratings to collapse and perhaps even voter turnout. We were really hoping for a shake-up this time round. The irruption of two young leaders, two women foreign to certain male liturgies, seemed to have marked a definitive and irreversible leap into the modernity (normality) of Europe and the West. And yet the old model still managed to take over. He did it in the usual Byzantine, Machiavellian, Italian way. The Agcom resolution said yes to the debate in Rai but made it subject to the approval of the majority of the parties. The majority of the parties, led by the M5S, got in the way and preferred to give up any other appointment (a Conte-Salvini was also required) rather than give space to the two leaders. Everyone reacted lukewarmly to La7’s alternative proposal for a multi-voice round table. No one accepted the danger of stumbling on an argument or of seeing the “enemy” prevail with a brilliant joke.
There were, it is true, also substantive objections from the intellectual world, largely well-founded: it is a proportional election, the two-way clash would not be between coalition leaders but between leaders of individual parties, the duels increase a personalization of the already excessive politics. And yet it has been eighteen years since we have seen the great protagonists of politics sit down in a studio for an honest face-to-face meeting to clarify their positions and intentions. Today’s reasonable doubts do not explain such a deep-rooted and ancient reluctance, which clearly has deeper reasons than an occasional contraindication due to the type of vote.
Sin. Meloni-Schlein would have revived a very boring race to the polls, which at the moment revolves around the modest provocations of some influencer candidates, the tours of others among markets and pizzerias and the social postcards that claim the miraculous recipes of those who govern and those is in opposition. That duel, many years after the archaeological Berlusconi-Prodi, would have given the measure of Italian change and perhaps provided the abstentionists, the lukewarm, the uncertain, with some reason to decide to go to the polls. We could have said to ourselves: well, finally, a debate worth listening to between two young leaders capable of testing themselves. Instead, for some political thrills we will have to wait for the Biden-Trump from overseas, the challenge of the dinosaurs, and it makes me sad just to write it.
