The unexpected hug
The so-called political scientists, and they are, claim that politics is a science. But it's not always easy to detect the academic brilliance of everyday Creole politics. Reading it assertively has become harder than reading a shadow in the wind. Standard analytical tools are no longer useful.
An example is what happened on Monday at the annual dinner of the Freedom Foundation, where Mauricio Macri and Santiago Caputo embraced—unexpected, according to some reports the following day— with a highly political significance . The problem is that no one knows what that political significance is.
Have they reconciled? Have they paused their feud? Should we expect a spring in autumn? Are Macri's unproductive milanesas with Milei returning after eight months? And, ultimately, does anything change when politicians who argue through the media and third parties look each other in the eye?
There's no doubt that the issue is important. Caputo, the advisor, a dark-skinned anti-Macrista, is credited with redoubled vehemence in his libertarian rupture strategy. This strategy, already unassailable in the city of Buenos Aires, now threatens the chances of defeating Kirchnerism in the province, the governing district. The question of whether the Mileístas and the Macristas run together or separately in the province is currently the biggest unknown in Argentine politics. Apparently, everyone from Chinese investors to Uruguayan bankers, as well as IMF President Kristalina Georgieva, who last week lived up to her given name and, more or less, said that if Milei doesn't win, everything will go to hell.
Milei often criticizes Macri for bringing Cristina Kirchner back in 2019. But if he loses the province now, it will be said that he reinstated Axel Kicillof. Although in that scenario, she'd most likely blame Macri.
Macri and Santiago Caputo not only hugged, they also laughed together. They exchanged phrases that were more humorous than cutting, in a tone of banter, not political manifesto, about "the bad guys." It was in reference to a recent statement by Macri: "Some people believe that by dealing with the bad guys you'll do better." The bad guys, if it needed clarifying, are the Kirchnerists and Massa supporters. It's fortunate that they only remembered Macri's last statement and forgot the previous one about the waterway, in which they made mutual insinuations about favoring deals. As if they were old friends, they whispered in comments in Parque Norte. But the concrete, the irrefutable, was the gesture, the hug. It at least raised expectations.
The antagonist embraces category has a considerable literature to its name. Although it may not have yielded successful years, the one that earned a bronze medal here was the one between Perón and Balbín on Sunday, November 19, 1972, at sunset in the house on Gaspar Campos Street. They were the two most important leaders in the country, but they never met, except through intermediaries, such as the 15 police officers who, on Perón's orders, in La Plata, arrested Balbín as soon as he finished voting in the 1950 elections, a day that became the first of a long year in prison. It is assumed that Balbín voted for himself, since he was the candidate for governor of Buenos Aires.
The Cold War also became a museum staple with a hug: that of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. But not everything is rosy. A tribute to variety is the quintessential treacherous embrace, that of Judas and Jesus, also known as the Judas kiss, intended to identify Jesus to the authorities seeking to arrest him. In a cynical version, a burly hugger existed outside the Bible: the Texan Lyndon Johnson, who in the 1950s, before succeeding John Kennedy, had been the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. His talent for intrigue relied on proverbial hugs, delivered with force among his friends. And even more forcefully among his enemies. Anyone he sought to persuade, "he would take them to a corner and there immobilize them with a powerful embrace, like that of a boa constrictor, while he spoke in their ear," wrote Robert Caro, Johnson's biographer.
The well-known bear hug, a show of affection and sympathy intended to hurt the recipient, is different. “Politics makes strange bedfellows,” said Winston Churchill (a phrase Groucho Marx reworked: “Politics does not make strange bedfellows; marriage does”). But this already surpasses the story of the face-to-face encounter between anti-smoking Mauricio Macri and Santiago Caputo, a chain smoker.
That the two most politically significant minutes of the Fundación Libertad dinner are difficult to interpret doesn't mean that misinterpretations shouldn't be dismissed. "Unexpected meeting," it was once said. The embrace may have been unexpected, but not the meeting. Caputo, who confirmed his attendance after Milei canceled his, of course must have known Macri would be there. Nor were they surprised to find themselves at a semi-clandestine meeting dedicated to venerating a Druze prophet; they were at the dinner of a liberal institution where the leaders of La Libertad Avanza and those of Pro share bread every year . It would have been a surprise if they had crossed paths with Nicolás del Caño.
The underlying problem isn't the short-circuiting of two ideologically similar forces that voted for the current president in the last election, the runoff. It's the strange functioning of the political system and the electoral incongruity it has reached: fierce adversaries in the country's second district needing alliances in the first to keep things from crumbling. This latter alliance remains undefined. And, curiously, it is accompanied by a corresponding uncertainty within Peronism, where politics has its own reasons for being confused . On Monday, the Buenos Aires Legislature repealed the PASO (Primary Elections). This paved the way for Kicillof to decouple provincial elections from national elections with the aim of moving toward emancipation from Cristina Kirchner. The paradox is that with the abolition of the nationalized primary system, Peronism was left without any means to resolve the biggest internal conflict since Kirchnerism began.
The background echoes come from the papal funeral, which set a high bar for political language acrobatics. Milei went from mercilessly insulting Francis (in terms that don't bear repeating) to saying last Thursday before leaving for Rome: "Whether you like it or not, the Pope has been the most important Argentine in Argentine history." Whether you like it or not, Milei is defiant regardless of the extreme in power.
So changing your mind isn't a problem. Just as memory foam mattresses have the ability to adapt to the contours of the body, reality seems to adapt to the president's opinions. María Elena Walsh missed a great moment to expand the lyrics of El Reino del revés (The Upside-Down Kingdom).
Macri is familiar with these elasticities, foreign to political textbooks, because he himself went from being considered repugnant and socialist, social democrat, fascist, lukewarm, timid, mediocre, and cowardly to being praised or having the president call him president without a prefix, as if he carried the honorary title (a glamorous American custom, by the way, that would be difficult to use here with Isabel Perón or Alberto Fernández). But then Milei took a few steps back. She didn't insult him again but maintained a high-voltage media dialogue with him. Macri said that the leaders who had a price had already been bought. Milei replied: let him bring the bill. A base not recommended for drawing up joint lists.
Given that the Milanese season didn't bear fruit, the question is how the necessary agreements should be made. Obviously not through media discussions. Not through intermediaries either. That's why a simple clash between two key players—a former president, leader of a party in crisis, and an advisor who controls half the state— arouses so much attention .
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