The New York Times. An insider’s insider returns to politics, this time as an outsider

The dark, double-breasted suits have long been a mainstay, but now former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has taken to wearing the occasional fedora. It lends him a rakish, retro air as he embarks on what many Italians, foreign investors and no doubt Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany hoped would never happen: another election campaign.

In recent weeks, Mr. Berlusconi, a center-right candidate, has blitzed the airwaves with a theatrical blend of anti-establishment populism, this from someone who governed Italy for the better part of the last decade. His prime targets are Prime Minister Mario Monti, a well-behaved technocrat now vying to retain his post, and Ms. Merkel, cast as the taskmaster of the austerity that is suffocating southern Europe.

With every hour that he appears on television, the medium he knows best and that made him rich, Mr. Berlusconi rises in opinion polls. His People of Liberty party is now in second place, after the center-left Democratic Party and before Mr. Monti’s nascent and still incoherent centrist bloc. They are trailed by the grass-roots Five Star Movement of Beppe Grillo, a comedian, which has tapped into a groundswell of antipolitical sentiment.

Analysts widely agree that there is little chance Mr. Berlusconi will govern Italy again after elections scheduled for February. But they say he is likely to win enough seats in Parliament to achieve his goals: protecting his interests on issues like justice reform, digital television rights and wiretap laws — and weakening the center-left Democratic Party and Mr. Monti.

Many analysts say that while Mr. Monti helped bring Italy back from the brink, he overestimated his popularity as a politician. Many Italians are angry that he raised the retirement age and an unpopular property tax that many say they cannot afford.

Mr. Berlusconi is widely seen as running to recapture voters who defected to Mr. Monti and Mr. Grillo. Analysts say his media appearances have had an important effect: They have helped put his party in first place in polls in the powerful Lombardy region, after he mended fences with a former ally, the Northern League, to back its candidate for regional president.

A center-right victory in Lombardy could deprive the Democratic Party of a clear majority in the Senate, where seats are determined in part by regional showings. That means that the left could not form a government without allying with Mr. Monti’s centrists.