Know your adversary

Gloomy as the mood vis-a-vis the leftist government may become in September, the opposition will still have a tough time cornering SYRIZA.

The administration has shown that it still has the ability to set the political agenda on its own terms. It can manipulate the discourse or stage fabricated arguments that eventually deflect public attention away from the hard stuff. It can be an unorthodox tactic. The government's standard response, which is summed up in the phrase "We have seen what your governments achieved over 40 years," is proving extremely resilient. The fact that the opposition is often represented by politicians and, most importantly, by ideas that have been discredited over the years makes it even harder to blow holes in the government's rhetoric.

Opposition politicians also tend to fall into a trap when attempting to raise issues which may be very...