There are a thousand Italys, but also two. One, the stereotype, is exuberant, extravagant, with an eye for bellezza ; the other austere, skilled and hard-working. The first is associated with the south ; the second, the north.
The two Italians who bestride the news agenda invert these images. Sergio Marchionne, head of Fiat, would-be creator of a transnational auto behemoth, was born in southern Abruzzo ; the other, Silvio Berlusconi, Italian premier and billionaire, is the son of a Milanese banker, epitome of northern savvy. But the industrialist is the austere one ; the politician-oligarch is scandalously extravagant. They project not just two images of Italy present, but conflicting visions of Italy’s future.
Mr Marchionne, son of a carabiniere who moved his family to Canada, prospered in North American business : Mr Berlusconi’s life and work have been wholly Italian. Mr Marchionne has a cosmopolitan vision for Fiat, seeing production as ineluctably global ; Mr Berlusconi’s main corporation, Mediaset, produces three major Italian television channels, which project an Italian-ness of a piece with its creator, through variety, reality and quiz shows of high glitz and gloss, attended by beautiful girls wearing little. Mr Marchionne outrages Italian impeccability with sweaters and rumpled collars ; Mr Berlusconi is rarely seen in other than finely tailored suits, complemented by sumptuous neck and footwear.
Mr Berlusconi now delights a scandal-addicted world with the most public of divorces, prompted by his efforts to promote television starlets into politics and his visit to a young model in Naples on her birthday, marked with a gift of expensive jewellery. His wife, Veronica Lario, has given a poised performance of dignified patience ; he, counter-attacking, has talked of leftwing media plots and political manoeuvres.
Mr Marchionne, by contrast, has a private life which is all but invisible. His wife and two children live on the shores of Lake Geneva, where he goes for the weekend ; he is reported as eating pizzas after work with his chauffeur and guards in Turin, Fiat’s base. The closest thing to public scandal is his collection of speeding tickets, and a crash in his Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano in 2007, from which he walked unhurt. Even that was in Switzerland.
Mr Berlusconi is popular, with the latest poll showing his high ratings undiminished. Yet his governing style, policies and private-public scandals befit an Italian economy that neither he, nor the left when in power, have managed to reform or to make face its weaknesses. Mr Marchionne, ruthless for all his public amiability, has reportedly included closure of two Italian plants in his takeover plan for General Motors’s Opel subsidiary – and he has spoken out against the numbing bureaucracy that surrounds (legal) Italian business.
Could the son of the Abruzzo policeman, 16 years Mr Berlusconi’s junior, be a candidate for premiership ? Or will middle Italy continue to prefer suits and scandals ?
