Obama losing control of his narrative? Then why is Berlusconi successfully holding his?

It seems that, during his first year in office, President Obama is progressively losing control of his narrative. It also seems that Italy’s Berlusconi is, instead, holding on to his narrative with success.

On Berlusconi again: when advertising and information find a synthesis and fiction becomes the only reality

Some of my international friends and colleagues have been probing me in these weeks to try and rationalise, from a communicational perspective, what is going on in my country.
A country which sees a priapist Premier, I wouldn’t say merrily… but certainly successfully, thrive through a national as well as global, ongoing now for months day-in-day-out [...]

Berlusconi has begun to rationalise and theorise his ‘cucku’ model of public relations

I wish to inform our global professional community that, directly from the horse’s mouth, we now also have a formal definition of Berlusconi’s public relations model:
la politica del cucù (pronounced cucku)!
The term comes, I presume, from a recent televised joke he exposed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he suddenly appeared in front [...]