Talking about nothing – understanding Italian politics

There’s a perfect image, useful to understand the noise level in the italian media and the meaningless of the most part of politic publications. That image is a photo, a portrait of Florence’s mayor, Matteo Renzi.

Why Renzi? Why not Berlusconi, or Bersani, let alone Mr. Grillo? For our friends who are so lucky to live outside italian borders, a little remainder. Matteo Renzi is currently the major of Florence, his previous experience was being president of the Florence’s country. These are administrative roles, all about the city of Florence. He became famous acting as a renovator, a young leader that always ask to the elders to give him room, to let him be at the helm of his party (PD, Democratic Party). In 2012 he challenged Mr. Bersani for the national leadership of the center-left coalition and losed.

The basic question is: being an administrator in a 550,000-sized town is enough to get what it takes to lead a 60+ million country?

The secondary questions are: yelling about the need for a change is enough to set up a program to lead Italy?  Being on stage 24/7  for the national media is enough to became familiar for the audience but is it enough to get respect?

You have to think about Mr. Renzi as the perfect sample for “talking about nothing” when you see him almost everywhere on the national media, when polls about his popularity are diffused at least weekly, when he shows up even in the news programs. The only thing he haven’t done so far is being in the meteo forecast but there’s still time before the next round of general elections. What is he talking about? Nothing but himself and the common bla-blah that everybody can get from a newspaper these days. New ideas? Zero.

So, what all this fuss is about? Nothing but hot air.