Do Not Adjust Your Sets

Silvio Berlusconi likes to think big. At an emergency European Union meeting last year, held to draw up a response to Israel's siege of Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound, the Italian Prime Minister had other things on his mind. "I have a solution to the vision of Europe," said Berlusconi, who had just returned from Moscow after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "We must make Russia a member of the E.U." The foreign ministers in the room were flabbergasted, according to a diplomat who was there, not only because Berlusconi was ignoring the issue at hand, but because he didn't seem to know that Russia wouldn't qualify for E.U. membership for decades. "Everybody thought it was like he'd never been exposed to real politics before," the diplomat says. "People couldn't take him seriously."

Starting this week, Europe will have plenty of new chances to take him seriously. As the media tycoon turned Prime Minister assumes the E.U.'s rotating six-month presidency, his brand of brash, simple, big- picture politics will reach a continent-wide audience. He takes center stage at a crucial juncture in the Union's history: 10 countries are set to join next year, the details of the new constitution must be hammered out and the E.U.'s tattered relations with the United States need patching up. Is Berlusconi — who has a self-confessed "major superiority complex" — the man to get the job done?

Diplomats worry that his headstrong style and taste for ad-lib ("We must be aware of the superiority of [Western] civilization" he said after 9/11) will kick up dust. And some influential academics even question whether, thanks to Berlusconi, Italy itself would qualify for E.U. membership if it were applying today. The E.U. requirement that a candidate country have a free media is arguably not being met by Italy, says Paul Ginsborg, a professor of contemporary European history at the University of Florence, since Berlusconi — Italy's richest man, with an estimated worth of over €5.1 billion — owns virtually all of the country's commercial television outlets. And the independence of the Italian judiciary is also under attack, thanks to a string of tailor-made laws passed by the Italian legislature to protect Berlusconi from a bribery prosecution that he says is politically motivated. These laws were capped in June by an immunity bill that stopped the trial against him dead in his tracks — guaranteeing that his time as E.U. president won't be sullied by a verdict.

Berlusconi has spent the two years since taking office preparing for his E.U. role by stuffing his own legal problems into a closet and slamming the door. But his conflict-of-interest problem remains, as even one supporter admits, "as big as a house." The Prime Minister is also the country's leading publisher, advertiser and a major player in the financial and insurance sectors. His three Mediaset channels account for more than 90% of the national commercial TV market, and he exerts a powerful sway over state broadcaster RAI. Last April he publicly called for the sacking of three left-leaning talk-show hosts — and they were duly fired. "Italy risks sliding into a regime without realizing it," warns opposition leader Francesco Rutelli.

Despite the criticisms, Berlusconi has become the Prime Minister with the tightest grip on power in postwar Italian history. His approval ratings remain high. Success in politics, he says, requires the same key skill as success in business: salesmanship. "He is who he is," says Giuliano Ferrara, a Berlusconi confidant and editor of the conservative daily Il Foglio. "Berlusconi is an outsider, the Milanese businessman who became Prime Minister. That's it." Throughout his storybook life — singing for tips on a cruise ship in his teens, making his first million in real estate in his 30s, launching a media empire that helped push him into the Forbes Top 50, and now, at 66, the most loved and loathed leader since World War II — this son of a salaried bank manager has shown a knack for knowing what people want.

At a private ceremony last year, Berlusconi summarized his approach to a group of young men and women who had just passed the grueling civil service exam that qualified them for the Italian diplomatic corps. Instead of briefing the budding diplomats on the subtleties of international relations, the billionaire leader addressed them as a potential new sales force. "Present yourself well," he said, according to someone who was there: firm handshakes, no sweaty palms and don't get caught with bad breath. Berlusconi's salesman's touch has served him well over the past 10 years. The television baron was a novelty when he entered politics in 1993, but he got elected by adapting American campaign tactics — colorful party conventions and slick campaign slogans — to an Italian audience. It didn't hurt that he controlled three television stations, a daily newspaper and several weekly magazines that were covering the election. But media savvy didn't help him in office, and he was written off the following year when his first shot at the premiership ended after only seven months, when his coalition unraveled following a judicial probe into his business dealings. Then Berlusconi made his stunning comeback — and, in the process, gave a thorough makeover to an Italian political system once run by faceless leaders and cautious backroom pols.