For TIME magazine picturing an Italian guy on the front cover of its international edition, with no disparaging intentions, is a rare event by itself and one of great pride for us, who are the man’s fellow citizens. Our pleasure reaches the climax when we find out the person in the picture is our Premier and the caption is: Can this man save Europe? Mind you: Europe, not Italy, as one could expect. Under the conditions, writing about him, however shortly, becomes irresistible for a man, like me, who lives on bread and politics. Too bad that I am known to being frank. In fact my frankness obliges me to write that, in my modest opinion (and, to quote Winston Churchill, I have a lot to be modest about), the answer to TIME caption is: I wish he could. And that is why I am calling this essay: Mario Monti’s Impossible Mission.