And this is our problem. Our former prime minister has been appalling, but that doesn’t bother him, and it doesn’t bother many Italians. He craves approval and told us only what we wanted to hear, seeking to be all things to all people. In the past few months, he has supported the coalition government led by Prime Minister Enrico Letta while campaigning against every decision the government has made.

Instead of patting ourselves on the back for getting rid of him, we should be asking why it took us so long to do so. One answer is that he has long played Italy’s absolver in chief. For 20 years, he has been forgiving us for all our sins, including the ones we were only thinking about committing. “Am I faithful? Frequently,” he quipped when confronted with evidence of his serial adultery. A few years ago, as stories about his bunga-bunga sex parties became public, he explained: “I have a stressful job. I need to unwind.” How many men chuckled at that one?

Then there is the way Mr. Berlusconi makes us feel about our place in the universe. Most Italians believe they stand alone against the world; or if not the world, their colleagues. We take pride in surviving professionally, socially and economically. So does Mr. Berlusconi.

Much has been written about Italian individualism, its achievements, its expedients, its limitations and its consequences. That was how Silvio Berlusconi started, a middle-class child who amassed his fortune in real estate, advertising and television, then established himself as a self-made man before building on Italy’s distrust of all things shared, our national antipathy for rules and the satisfaction we take in finding a private solution to a public problem.

Silvio Berlusconi was prepared to be anything in order to endure forever. It didn’t work. Now he’s out of Parliament. His judicial woes are piling up, with charges ranging from bribing witnesses to paying a minor for sex.

But it would be wrong for us to forget that many people have given him their vote since 1994. Were his political opponents weak and unconvincing? Maybe. But there’s more to it than that.

Last week, outside his Rome residence, Palazzo Grazioli, next door to the local offices of the newspaper Corriere della Sera, Mr. Berlusconi spoke to a small crowd of flag-waving fans. A short, portly man in a black suit and crew neck shirt, heavily made up and sporting a tarmac haircut, he looked sad and slightly perturbing. Tony Soprano meets Captain Kirk. Ridiculous? But didn’t we all root for Tony Soprano?