Current Italian affairs: a machist and slightly forgetful interpretation

Beppe Severgnini
Silvio Berlusconi: An Italian Mirror
Time 30th April 2009

The idea that the current prime minister is so popular because he is so similar to the average Italian or represents a widespread aspiration is not new and is the core of the article above.
However, I frankly struggle to understand how a woman identifies in the Italian PM, do our other halves see in him their ideal husband?
Moreover, even more obscure is the sentence: "We are too anarchic to allow anyone to tell us what do for long (they all failed, from Caesar Augustus to Benito Mussolini)"

Now, Mussolini ruled Italy until 1943 (for 21 years) whilst Augustus was the Emperor of something slightly bigger than Italy alone for 41 years. Although neither is an example of illuminated government, surely we cannot talk of them as underachievers in the tightness of the grip they imposed on the state and its subjects, for not exactly one week.