Skilled politician or mere opportunist?

At the age of 11, Sergio Massa turned a bucket upside down, went upstairs and gave a speech, like the politicians he saw on TV, to absolutely no one. Today it fills the pavilions. And he may be one step, one small step, away from fulfilling his lifelong dream: reaching Casa Rosada as president of Argentina.

To realize this dream, Massa, 51 years old, son of Italian immigrants who arrived in the South American country at the ages of six and eleven, tried the right lane, the left lane and the middle lane; supported Carlos Menem, embraced Nestor Kirchner, advised Cristina Kirchner, became anti-Kirchnerist and then neo-Kirchnerist; he was a dynamic mayor and administrative manager, he became provincial deputy, later national, and then chairman of them all; he led the presidential office, was the third most voted in the 2015 presidential race and risked taking over the Ministry of Economy last year with inflation approaching 150% per year.

Yes, Massa is a politician. And professional. And skilled. Perhaps too much, to the point of being called opportunistic. “Since the 1990s, he has held virtually every possible position in the state structure,” notes Carlos De Angelis, political analyst and columnist for the newspaper Profile. “He is a born politician, who at the same time feels what the scenario of the country is, who the allies are, who the rivals are, and then adapts. He has already changed allies and rivalries a few times.”adds the professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

In addition to his Italian origins, Unión’s candidate for La Patria has one more detail in common with his competitor for La Libertad Avanza: like Milei, he was a goalkeeper in his youth, in his case for Tigre, his favorite club, despite his long career. friendship with Boca Juniors star Riquelme.

Massa, who, in order to run for provincial deputy, interrupted his law studies at the age of 27 and only completed them in 2013, in the middle of the campaign for national deputy, started in an ultra-liberal party in support of Carlos Menem. He was president of 1989 to 1999, but turned left in 2003 by joining Nestor Kirchner.

However, the contradictions of Massa, married to Malena Galmarini, another political animal who today heads Argentina’s state-owned water and sanitation company, and father of Milagros and Tomás, are nothing more than the contradictions of Peronism, the political movement born in the 1940s. around the figure of Juan Domingo Perón (and his wife Evita) that no one born outside Argentina can quite understand what it is.

“Don’t worry, we Argentinians don’t really understand what Peronism is either,” says De Angelis. “Because it has a weak doctrine, Peronism seeks alliances on the left and right and absorbs these spaces. It is a political movement in permanent transformation, without defined political coordinates, horizontally and vertically. It adapts to the most progressive or conservative ideologies, depending on the situation. , depending on the world context and the moods of society.”

“That is an advantage,” says the academic, “because in the 1990s it managed to move from the neoconservatism of the Washington Consensus, with Menem, to the third way socialist of the 21st century, with, for example, the Kirchners .” . Pasta? He just swam with the current.

Although Peronism is heterogeneous by nature, Massa is even more so: they attribute to it “the concept of the wide middle ground”, a vast political center that establishes similarities between left and right and empties contradictions, thereby its main qualities become worthwhile and even recognised. by rivals: capacity for dialogue, fine strategic insight, bargaining power – what is essentially required of ‘racist politicians’.

But in fact, Massa, who promises to tame the economy he has overseen for a year, boost exports, stabilize the peso and combat inflation of nearly 150% per year, was never in fact a Peronist , been a menemist. , or a Kirchnerist – ever since he climbed into the bucket to speak into the void at the age of 11, he was simply a convinced massist.

Eccentric outsider or crazy?

In the latest debate between Javier Milei and Sergio Massa, the government candidate suggested that his rival had been fired from the Central Bank, the same bank he promises to implode if elected, because he had failed psychotechnical exams as an intern at the institution. The moment, which was unanimously considered the most important point of the evening, was repeated dozens, hundreds of times.

Massa understood Milei’s weak point in the eyes of the electorate: mental health. Or the supposed lack thereof.

“El Loco” Milei, 53 years old, son of a bus driver and a maid, who according to him beat him, former youth goalkeeper of Chacarita Juniors, former fan of Boca Juniors, who stopped following because he had “become a populist club”, and former lead singer of Everest, a rock band inspired by the Rolling Stones, trained and postgraduate economist, fanatic of neoliberalism and Austrian School economic thought, former project advisor to a soldier convicted of crimes against humanity, failed Central Bank employee , lives on the sometimes subtle line between healthy eccentricity and pathological madness.

Single and without children, he confessed that Conan, an English mastiff dog who died in 2017 and tried to clone him, was the great love of his life. Especially when the dog helped him deal with depression around the turn of the millennium, a period when he weighed more than 120 kilos.

In 2017, perfectly recovered, with 50 scientific articles, 11 published books and a regular guest on TV shows in which he gathered a legion of fans, especially young people, with his atypical image and his outbursts of anger, he admitted to hiring media to communicate with Conan, because, he says, the dog is his most important political advisor to this day.

The youngest sister, Karina Milei, like Conan another target of the candidate’s passionate devotion, even learned to communicate with animals, living or dead, to translate the late English mastiff’s advice into politics. “Died but only physically,” Milei always corrects, “actually he only went to number 1,” he adds, referring to God.

In politics and economics, ideas are once again on the cusp of eccentricity and madness, sometimes classified as genius by supporters, sometimes seen as catastrophic by opponents: promises to dollarize the economy, implode the Central Bank, bodies to legalize and free access to weapons. He continues to call global warming a socialist lie, denies the crimes of Argentina’s dictatorship and threatens to break with the country’s two largest international partners, China and Brazil.

He also brings together a surprising group of hatreds and passions, at least for a traditional Argentinian: he calls his compatriot Pope Francis “representative of the evil” and Maradona “Mardedroga”, while admitting that he idolizes Margaret Thatcher, who is less seen in the country as a neoliberal frame of reference and more as the architect of the bloody Falklands War.

“To vote for him is the equivalent of suicidal tendencies in politics, after the governments of Maurício Macri and Alberto Fernández put the economy in trouble, voters think: “If without Milei we are already on the brink of the abyss, why should we Then don’t jump?””, summarized Juan Grabois, presidential candidate for the same political area as Sergio Massa, but defeated by him in the primaries.

Pathetic for some, fascinating for others: “El Loco” Milei also revealed that he was a tantric sex teacher and made his debut as a theater actor in the play in 2018 Milei’s officewhere he played himself, with a half Elvis Presley, half Wolverine look, composed by Lilia Lemoine, a beautician, make-up artist, cosplayer and influencer who serves as his image consultant and is also an alternate for the same party as the candidate, the libertarian, in his spare time.

“The secret of his success,” says biographer Juan Luis González, “is that he is not a character; the public Milei and the private Milei are the same person. At least until the second round, when he wants to win votes for the center, moderate.”