Politics & Power Quote by Silvio Berlusconi

Berlusconi is doing the oldest trick in the populist playbook: turning a liability into a charm offensive. “I’m not a traditional politician” is less biography than positioning, a refusal of the fusty rulebook Italians often associate with party machines and backroom deals. He’s framing himself as an interruption - a man too lively, too unserious, to be absorbed by the gray bureaucracy of the state. The “sense of humor” isn’t incidental; it’s a political technology. Humor lets him disarm criticism, rebrand gaffes as entertainment, and invite supporters to treat scandal as a private joke shared against sanctimonious elites.

The mock vow to “soften it and become boring” is slyly self-exculpatory. He pretends to accept the critique that leaders should be sober, restrained, predictable. Then he immediately undercuts it with “I’m not sure if I’ll be able to,” turning discipline into something almost unnatural, as if institutional seriousness is an outfit that doesn’t fit his body. The subtext: if you demand propriety, you’re asking him to betray his authentic self - and if the country can’t handle his personality, that’s the country’s problem.

In context, the line sits comfortably in Berlusconi’s long project of collapsing politics into performance. As a media tycoon-turned-premier, he never just governed; he auditioned. The promise of boredom is a wink, not a plan: he’s signaling that the spectacle will continue, while daring opponents to argue that politics shouldn’t be entertaining. That dare is the point.