72 hours left. Giorgia Meloni feels the ticking of the Cav’s clock: 1,412 days, the record of the second Berlusconi government that will be archived on September 4. Elly Schlein has already overtaken the jaguar, surpassing him on August 24: 1,261 consecutive days leading the PD, one more than Pier Luigi Bersani. Renzi, the reformist leopard ahead in the total of two terms at the head of the Company, still needs to be unspotted, but here continuity counts. Here they are, the two women who in Italy, where leaders are worn out like batteries, have achieved the least Italian feat of all: persevering, lasting, staying.
Looking at the political graveyard behind them, it’s no small thing. Renzi was dismissed with a referendum in the 40% era, Enrico Letta with a “stay calm” and a bell passed on, Salvini gambled Palazzo Chigi between a mojito and a cube at Papeete, Conte I ended with the knight’s move and Conte II out of revenge by the usual jockey, that is Renzi who, just to keep up training, pulled the plug. Meloni and Schlein have developed a quality that Treccani could include under the entry: the ability not to be killed by friendly fire. Both last, but with two opposite techniques.
Meloni commands by making it clear that without her the center-right would mainly have the center and the right. Separate. Salvini has dropped to 5.1% according to Ipsos, Tajani guards the moderates, General Vannacci built Futuro Nazionale and reached 7.1 thanks to (somewhat trashy) AI-generated videos amid general discomfort. He dreams of a return to ancient Rome, talks about “Mediterranean patriarchy” (what?!?), remigration and awaits a call from the premier like an officer left out of the operations room. He doesn’t have the votes to bring down Meloni. He has something more annoying: those to force her to think about him. Yet, despite everything – despite excise taxes, Trump, the denied photo, former ministers and undersecretaries full of troubles, taverns, the Bignami of self-inflicted harm, generals and thugs, and Tajani as if it were antani – the majority holds. They argue and huff, but then they vote. It’s almost a parliamentary couple’s therapy: everyone tells voters they can’t stand the others, but no one really wants to leave home. Meloni’s strength is having rendered dissent harmless. Allies can sulk as long as in the end they raise their hand.
Schlein governs the opposite: not a disciplined party, but a condominium where no one owns enough thousandths to change the administrator. The PD is at 20.1 percent (still Ipsos), M5S at 14.5, AVS at 6.3, then there are Renzi, Calenda, the reformists, the ex-Renzi PD members, the grumpy defectors and those who could become so at the next leadership. Compared to that, the Olive Tree was a homogeneous amalgam. In June, the photo with Schlein, Conte, Fratoianni and Bonelli seemed the birth and break-up act of the coalition. The point break. Renzi was missing and Calenda asked if he was under the table. And so it became clear that in the broad field the problem is not finding a chair: it’s establishing who has the right to reel.
Schlein survived because no PD faction found an alternative, someone else to blame for the next blow. And because she lets contradictions float until they become lethal. For example: on Ukraine, Conte would like to entrust the political line to the primaries as well, she replied that “it doesn’t work like that,” the common program comes first. Fratoianni added that it’s not automatic that whoever wins the primaries becomes “the leader.” Renzi proposes an iron pact (on the lists?). The broad field, in short, still has to choose the candidate, decide with which ideas to cultivate it and clarify what happens if the chosen candidate wants to change them (the ideas and the lists). But it exists. And for the Italian left, that is already a result, an epistemological puzzle, but a result.
Here lies the difference. Meloni uses conflict to establish a hierarchy. Schlein absorbs it to prevent the hierarchy from exploding. One narrows the top, the other widens the table. One always speaks as if she had already decided, the other as if the decision were too inclusive to say it is decided. The first risks the arrogance of command, the second the permanent meeting, the vagueness of purposes in a din of proposals.
Even in communication, they have built two opposite armors. Meloni has for years turned every issue into a personal matter: me against them, Italy against those who treat it badly, the mother, the woman, the Christian, the patriot, the boss. It works as long as biography and politics march in the same direction. Then came The Donald. Meloni was the only EU leader at his inauguration and thought that affinity on immigration and the war on woke would open a fast lane with Washington. It ended with the Italian premier opposing the use of bases for American attacks on Iran (something socialist Sanchez did, take that), Trump first ghosting her, then blasting her, and weeks passing without talking. “I thought it would be easier,” she admitted. A nearly marital phrase. The Financial Times made it a warning and reminded her that ideological affinity with the Maga guarantees nothing if in the US those who voted for you want that slogan guaranteed at the gas pump: America first, after spaghetti.
But Giorgia has gained an advantage from this landing dispute turned international crisis, because the woman who was supposed to be Trump’s Italian friend has become the premier who knows how to say no to him. Before, harmony was a show of strength, now distance is. The kind of thing: in politics coherence remains a virtue, but knowing how to change the caption on the same photo helps a lot.
Schlein suffers from the opposite problem. Her ideas often exist before their narrative. Minimum wage, public health, bills, inequalities: she talks about them. But she doesn’t always manage to occupy that ground. There is a cognitive dissonance between what she says and the image the public has of her. It’s called confirmation bias: she does everything to talk about concrete things, but citizens filter new information to consolidate their first impression. Imagine the frustration: you bring voters a lot of solid proposals – tough stuff – and they think it’s a mountain of fluff. So Conte just had to mention Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to immediately seem like the one who wants to bring the left back to the poor. She can present ten labor plans and remains the leader of rights. She is the nemesis of a politics that built a “we” much more effective than her “I.”
In short, Giorgia and Elly. One pays when she changes her mind, the other when she delays choosing her own. The first, after tasting that touch of narcissistic syndrome that complicates all human relationships with Trump, the square Giorgia, seemed a bit disheveled; and after discovering the anti-woke philosopher Conte (everyone is convinced Bettini had a hand in it, tu quoque Goffredo), the second looked like the one who “didn’t see it coming.” To have a super saiyan leader, a fusion would suffice.
Because in all these misfortunes, Giorgelly’s longevity says something interesting about female superiority in managing chaos. Studies on leaders describe the usual double bind: if you’re tough, they say you’re aggressive; if you’re conciliatory, you’re perceived as weak. Yet, governing oxymorons is benefiting both. You might say: yes, they last, but it’s deprivation, lack, absence that strengthen their respective leaderships. True. But the politics of the unfinished works for now. It promises the projection of a desire on an object that every voter can finish sculpting as they wish and the hope of a better world while holding their nose in the meantime. Meloni is irreplaceable because no one on the right can yet inherit voters, allies, and international credibility all at once. Schlein because no one in the PD today could remove her without reopening the civil war she has frozen. The first governs an army that sometimes fires in the air. The second a federation that democratically discusses the rules to beat each other up. Meanwhile, on the agenda is the checkmark on those two dates. For Giorgia, the day she will overtake Silvio. For Elly, the day she unspotted the jaguar. Next year there will be elections, for now they remain. Italy counts the time it has left.
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