21st century fox

o North Americans, Italian politics is contaminated by complication. But getting a handle on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's latest burst of studio-boss impunity isn't hard. A true boss has no rivals, which in turn begs displays of condescension to the subaltern.

Did he use state aircraft to ferry guests to his Sardinian villa where they cavorted half-naked? What if he did? Official use is discretionary and the discretion is his. Did he consort with a teenaged girl who could be his granddaughter, as his wife suggests? No. His wife should apologize. Should Milan and other Italian cities accept multiculturalism? Hell no. The increasing presence of "non-Italian citizens" makes some Milan neighborhoods seem like "you're not in an Italian city but in an African one."

Umberto Bossi: His 10 percent matters.

Reams have been written about Italy’s political feudalism and its chronic resistance to innovation.

Yet Berlusconi 2.0 is anything but cliché's favorite son. His bravado reflects two years of political upheaval that have transformed Italy into a state without a credible opposition.

From 2001 to 2006, Berlusconi's Forza Italia party ran Italy with lukewarm but loyal support from the rightist National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) and Northern League (Lega Nord). He rose to power for the second time when Italy's main leftist parties, marshaled under the patchwork Olive Tree coalition headed by former Rome Mayor Francesco Rutelli, fell afoul of awful management. In May 2001 national elections Berlusconi's House of Freedom alliance beat back the Olive Tree with both sides polling more than 40 percent of the vote.

This led to five noisy years of center-left dissent, with moderates and radicals hammering away at Berlusconi's grossness and gaffes. Anti-Berlusconi subculture thrived as a kind of life method.

Prodi: Not a chance in the world.

Eager to regain power but unwilling to chance another maverick (Rutelli had failed to gain traction), the 10-party Union of 2006, the Olive Tree's successor, reluctantly gambled on former Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a professional economist who had already defeated Berlusconi in the 1990s.

Prodi, staid and unflappable, did his part. In televised debates, Berlusconi baited him without luck. As Prodi lectured, Berlusconi babbled, desperately at times. Prodi seemed suddenly cool and "presidential."

Prodi's bulky Union won, but barely. Two-speed election laws gave Prodi a wide majority in the lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, but only a one-vote margin in the upper one, the Senate.

The future of the anti-Berlusconi left, Prodi observed wisely at the time, hinged on keeping the fragile center-left partnership intact long enough to establish viable leadership.

Italians don't come around quickly. The left hadn't governed for nearly a decade. It was vulnerable to mishaps, and to itself.

Berlusconi meanwhile did all he could to divide the majority. Prodi's every day was a sufferance. Within his coalition, radicals disparaged centrists who in turn deprecated extremists. The strife grew as unappetizing as Berlusconi himself.

In 18 months, a center-left engineered to defeat Berlusconi came messily apart.

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