In Cold Blood

"My God," gasped one awed Deputy after Premier Giulio Andreotti, 53, had outlined for the Italian Parliament what he expected from his new government. "That wasn't a program for a beach government. That wasn't even a program for a whole [fiveyear] parliamentary period. That was a program for two Parliaments."

So it appeared. A "beach government," in Italy's cyclical political crises, is one formed to last for the summer vacation, when politicians traditionally join their families at the seashore. Some expected Andreotti's coalition of Christian Democrats, Social Democrats and Liberals to be no more than that, particularly since it was approved by a narrow 329-to-288 vote in the Chamber of Deputies and by 163 to 155 in the Senate.

The meticulous, stoop-shouldered Andreotti, however, had other ideas, because Italy is stumbling deeper into a recessionary quagmire of unproductive wage increases, rising unemployment, diminishing corporate profits and pressures on the lira. Before Parliament adjourns for the beach next week, Andreotti expects action on part of his long legislative program. He wants to provide industry with tax relief now and to unfreeze some of the $ 18 billion for public spending that has already been approved by Parliament but is tied up in Italy's strangling bureaucracy. That would give him the political momentum to rule confidently by decree during the parliamentary vacation.

If anybody can untangle Italian government at this point, it would appear to be Andreotti. He is both experienced and so cool and detached in his political dealings that he is said to have sangue ghiaccio (icy blood). Andreotti is Italy's first Roman-born Premier since unification. He was only a fledgling lawyer-journalist when he became a wartime protege of Alcide de Gasperi, Italy's great postwar Premier. De Gasperi was a Vatican librarian hiding from the Fascists when Andreotti wandered in one day in 1941 to begin research on papal naval history.* After the war Andreotti became a member of the first Constituent Assembly and also secretary of De Gasperi's Cabinet.

Not only has he served in every Parliament since, but he has also been, at various times, Minister of Interior, Foreign Affairs, Treasury, Defense, Finance and Industry. Succeeding to the premiership last February, he guided the successful centrist strategy by which the Christian Democrats called for early elections and dropped the contentious Socialists from their coalition in favor of the right-of-center Liberals (TIME, May 22). As a result, the Christian Democrats picked up one seat in an election in which they had been expected to lose up to 30. Andreotti himself got more votes than any other candidate.

Now, in addition to making Italy's 35th postwar government function, Andreotti must also maintain discipline among the nine factions of his own party. With such a narrow majority, moreover, he must somehow persuade the Socialists to cooperate instead of fighting him. Those who believe he can do it point out that Andreotti is referred to by other politicians as "the joker." In Italy, the joker is always the decisive card.

*The papal states maintained a navy until Italian unification in 1870; the Popes were thus naval commanders. The most successful was Pius V, whose fleet in 1571 joined ships from Venice and Spain to defeat the Turks at Lepanto.

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