Welcome to Berlusconi's "Operation Truth"

[Kellanved]

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants to be re-elected. Which is why he is running a campaign unparalleled for its negativity. He has affronted the Italian president and denounced the opposition. It's all part of his "Operation Truth."

Ask anyone in sales and they'll tell you that there are no bad products, just bad advertising. That too seems to be the maestro's mantra in Italy's current election campaign. Italian Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi is everywhere these days -- it's difficult these days to find any station on Italian television, public and private alike, that isn't broadcasting something about Berlusconi. He leaves the set of the talk show "Eight-thirty" only to reappear 30 minutes later on the soccer show "The Process," -- both shows being broadcast live. One minute he's on "Unomattina," then he's talking to the host of "Domenica In" and performing a Neapolitan folk song before ending up on "The Meaning of Life," where he talks about his Mamma Rosa and his own children, who he says get their intelligence from him. Anyone channel-surfing at 1:30 a.m. will find the prime minister on "Channel 5" in a live dispute with center-left politician Francesco Rutelli. The next day the show repeats itself, live and with the same cast of characters.

It's a political TV shopping network. The only way to tell the days apart is by paying attention to Berlusconi's changing neckties. But whatever the show, the product is always the same: I, Silvio, beaming, made-up and in excellent spirits. The most hard-working prime minister of all time, the visionary reformer, the statesman who has "always," as he is fond of emphasizing, known where to draw the line between his official position and his private interests. Silvio Berlusconi calls it "Operation Truth."
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This marriage of convenience is worlds away from the kind of party based on the American Democratic Party model that Prodi envisions. "To achieve that, we'll have to wait until the last former Communists and the last former Christian Democrats have disappeared. We'll be there in a hundred years," says Umberto Eco, a close friend of Prodi.

"Tomorrow is another day" is the slogan Romano Prodi uses on his campaign posters. The message? Every nightmare is bound to end eventually.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,398647,00.html