The Lula Years: Positive and Negative Implications of Presidential Personalization of Politics in Brazil

Given institutional features as coalition Presidentialism, as well as political history and culture, Brazil has often seen prominent political leaders who rely on their personal charisma and communication skills, such as Getúlio Vargas in the first half of last century and, more recently, Lula da Silva, President between 2003 and 2010. His personal influence was decisive to get former Secretary Dilma Rousseff elected to succeed him, in spite of growing rejection of the Workers Party’s image – if not of its popular policies. Up to the present, PT still uses strategically the ex-President’s figure and declarations to counter hostile media and Congress opposition. Analysts and political scientists even distinguish traditional party identification, which was always relatively high for PT, from a new phenomenon seen as “lulismo”. Dilma’s leadership, on the other hand, has been marked by a technical background and absence of media skills; in fact, she had never run for any elected office until the Presidency, has a very poor relation with national media and seems unable to deal with the political and economic crisis that has haunted her mandates. Her style and persona can be seen as having negative influence in perception and evaluation by citizens and journalists, and had to be dealt with peculiar communication strategies for electoral campaign. This papers looks at a representative sample of electoral propaganda by PT during the last four presidential elections, which the party won, twice with Lula (2002, 2006) and twice with Dilma (2010, 2014). Applying methodology developed since 1996 and based on international and comparative literature, we aim to identify the different strategies and the role of personal style in each different political context. It is worth noting the importance of television advertising for Brazilian executive elections, with a significant audience to the already traditional Free Broadcast Electoral Airtime.