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Rating: 'Every now and then someone asks me what I do for a living. I haven’t found an answer yet.
The truth is that there is no answer.
I don't do something. I am something.
I am the invisible face of power.
I am the chief of staff.
I know, I see, I arrange, I solve, I speed up and slow down, I cheat and unravel. I frequent the shadows. Of politics, institutions, and all orbiting planets. Industry, finance, Church.
I do not voice on Twitter, do not pontificate in newspapers, do not squabble in talk shows. I appear few times and always where there are no prying eyes. Nobody knows me, except those who recognize me. From the President of the Republic, who receives me privately, to the ministry usher, who greets me every morning with a deferential “Good morning, Mr. Chief of Staff.”
Mister. Which in the Rome of the doctors’ is the height of formality and deference. The measure of distinction.
We chiefs of staff are not a class. We are a clergy. About fifty people who hold up Italy, pulling its strings behind the scenes.
Politicians come and go, we remain. We are the continuity, the thin and resilient skeleton of a fragile, flabby, crippled state from birth. Clerics of an initiatory knowledge that is not just doctrine, but above all practice. That is not taught at Bocconi or Harvard. That is not coded in manuals. That is transmitted like an osmotic flow in our sanctuaries: Administrative Court, Council of State, Court of Auditors, State Lawyers. From where we come and go, shuttling with the ministries. Because chiefs of staff are partly born and partly made.
The legitimacy of our power is not blood, votes, blackmail, servility. It is authority. Which makes us detested, but also indispensable. We are not scrappable. Those who tried to do without us lasted little. And were hurt.
Small, ambitious, pathetic political leaders. They believe history begins with them.
I, on the other hand, was here before they were born.
I have been here since the time of Crispi.'
(from the 'Prologue')
'...there are no good powers' (Fabrizio De André, 'In the Hour of My Freedom')
For many years I had thought that the 'hidden powers', the 'strong powers', were those who had plotted against Italy (see the era of Terrorism, the 70s).
Reading this book instead, I realized another type of power, no less insidious: that of the chiefs of staff.
A central figure, acting as a link between all those moving among the halls of Power and the ministries, ensuring the perfect functioning of the entire legislative machine of the State.
One of them narrates to Giuseppe Salvaggiulo, head of the political department (now no more, note of the reviewer) of the daily 'La Stampa', presenting the chief of staff as the 'trusted man' under the services of the President of the Republic or a minister, with whom he collaborates side by side as a link with the team of officials working at the ministry and being trusted with his life and that of his family.
If he doesn’t work for a minister, a chief of staff takes care of solving problems that arise during ceremonies, on official occasions: once the narrator had called the chief of police to delay the arrival of a foreign head of state on an official visit to Palazzo Chigi because the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was not yet present and after several calls to his cellphone, he was found absent.
As one discovers the life of a chief of staff, of politics seen inside the halls of Power, and of the same over the last 30 years, one encounters a fact that would be sensational if we hadn’t known a while ago, on the satirical and investigative program 'Le Iene' on Italia Uno, of ministers' assistants working off the books in Parliament: the amendment of some points of a Financial Law a few days before the approval day, established by Law, without following the rules.
(The violation of laws by those who represent them).
'We are not scrappable. Those who tried to do without us [...] were hurt': the sense of the second phrase returns to the character of 'irreplaceable' of the chiefs of staff, because those who tried to replace them found themselves in difficulty (the case of the former mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, during her tenure, with her staff).
But not just a job, rather a way of life: his presence at institutional events to gather favors and make them, and at social events, cultural places, and selected circles to meet people (important ones, note of the reviewer) for whom to work when his assignment will be finished.
A chapter is dedicated to Gianni Letta, known as the undersecretary of the Berlusconi party "Forza Italia"/note of the reviewer, about his ability to stay behind the scenes of Power and his way of maneuvering people and situations.
A book that I strongly recommend to those who love novels and 'murky' stories about the games of Power, but also to understand the continuous 'dysfunctions' of Politics in the places that represent it.
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