For a generation, Berlusconi loomed over his nation’s political scene and cast a shadow on the rest of the West. Long after his death, we’ll still be living with the brash political style and quasi-populism that powered his career.
[...]
He exits the stage a diminished, if unbowed, figure — a junior partner in a right-wing coalition who spent years fighting tangled legal battles
over all sorts of damning charges, from bribery to abuse of office to
paying for sex with an underage minor.
“No politician anywhere in the world, not even Netanyahu, faced over their career anything like the number and range of criminal allegations that Berlusconi did,” wrote Netanyahu biographer Anshel Pfeffer. “But he wore his prosecutors down with time-delaying tactics, a relentless barrage of pressure in his tame media and finally, when it became necessary, changes to the law that ensured he would not have to go to prison and could remain in politics.”
Pfeffer, writing in Israeli newspaper Haaretz, added: “It was enough to redefine Italian politics and the media so enough of them could be convinced that he was the victim of left-wing enemies, and maintain the base support among his Forza Italia party.”