A trio of stains

Steve Barnes

Steve Barnes

You and I and others who at occasionally look past Arkansas’ borders, we spent some time recently considering three global figures, each of them until recently their nation’s head of state. Striking similarities abound. Each rode a populist wave to power, even as the most seasoned and serious of their countrymen warned that disappointment, even disaster, loomed. All three of them were finally deposed by their colleagues or their electorates; two of them, the two who survive, even now vow to return to power. And, given the times, who is to say they won’t?

Given the “special relationship” between our land and Great Britain, let’s begin with Boris Johnson, who grew to fame with a loud mouth and boorish, know-nothing persona made for anything-goes television. His chaotic premiership, marred by sequential scandals, prompted his resignation as prime minister, followed earlier this month by his departure from Parliament, one step ahead of expulsion. The investigations of his administration were, Johnson declared, a “witch hunt.”

Well, there’ll be no expression of editorial opinion here. But take note of Sir Max Hastings, among his country’s most honored journalist- historians, opining in a newspaper owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch, Johnson’s longtime patron. Johnson’s pledge (threat?) to remain in public life, Hastings argued, “reflected almost deranged narcissism. It proclaimed only his own alleged victimhood. … If we are to move forward, to find a new and more successful path, we must discover how to become again serious people, addressing issues and not personalities. Explicitly, we must stop talking about Boris Johnson; consign him to the spam box.”

More: “Johnson may boast about vaccines and support for Ukraine, but his stewardship of Britain was a crony-riddled shambles, as his closest aides testify.

“He is perhaps the most selfish human being I have ever met, indifferent to the welfare of anyone save himself. It is striking that he has few, if any, personal friends. He demands loyalty, but is incapable of giving it to others. He has neither principles nor personal convictions, save about his own ambitions and desires.

“He is a stranger to truth, a lifelong liar about big things and small. … Britain’s reputation has suffered gravely for having chosen a prime minister whose word cannot be trusted.”

Hastings’ colleague, Anthony Seldon, pitched it: Johnson’s “inner emptiness made it imperative for him always to be the centre of attention, craving affirmation and breaking truth and convention to achieve it. … Not a single person whom he encountered in his life outside his family has not been cheapened or damaged by their association with him.”

Then there’s Silvio Berlusconi, dead at age 86, having dominated Italy’s politics for two generations and crippled its economy in the process. Having risen to power with the unceasing assistance of his several television networks, which amplified his outlandish appeal to Italy’s “common man,” Berlusconi conned, cajoled or cornered his party’s parliamentary bloc into giving him practically everything he requested, or demanded — including immunity from the multiple investigations of his political stewardship, his personal finances and his bedroom behavior. (He delighted in hosting “bacchanalian soirées,” as one wag put it.) The prosecutors and judges who investigated his shenanigans were, he said, crooked. He was a victim, he said, of what he contended was fake news. He was a pal of Vladimir Putin, and once blandly asserted that Mussolini “never killed anyone” — personally, Berlusconi possibly meant. In addition to his woman troubles the short but suave Italian had tax troubles, the latter more than the former helping finally drive him from government.

“Far from a happier time that contrasts with today’s ills, Berlusconi’s spell in power produced the monsters that followed,” records David Broder in Jacobin. “The trivialization of his record today, as a supporter of Europe or NATO or even opponent of ‘populism,’ is a marker of how far the political mainstream has swung to the right, and what low standards are set for ‘liberal democracy.’ Berlusconi the man has gone, but we are still living in his world.”

“Few politicians could run an electoral campaign better than Berlusconi, few could run a government worse,” adds political scientist Alberto Mingardi, writing from Milan. “At the end of the day, he was deeply bored by the intricacies of public policies and had little patience for it. He enjoyed being in the spotlight and, as with most businesspeople, to rub shoulders with the great and powerful.”

Yes. Now, that third man, the other head of state, the one who bears such a striking resemblance to Johnson and Berlusconi …