EL LOCO

PRESIDENT JAVIER MILEI'S MISSION TO REMAKE ARGENTINA

- VERA BERGENGRUEN/ BUENOS AIRES

President Javier Milei hates his new office.

The Casa Rosada, with its historic blue chair and ornate paneled walls, feels tainted by his predecessors, who he believes drove Argentina into ruin. But there is one detail Milei loves. Engraved into a fireplace mantle is a bronze lion, the animal he adopted as a symbol during his dizzying rise to power. Showing me around the vast second-floor space, Milei gestures to a blown-up photo of the lion, propped on his desk as a totem of his destiny. "He was waiting for me here," he says.

Milei may be the world's most eccentric head of state. Not long ago, he was a libertarian economist and TV pundit known as El Loco-the madman-for his profane outbursts. The oddities of his campaign often overshadowed the stark austerity program he promoted to pull the country out of its economic crisis. Milei, who has bragged about being a tantric sex guru, brandished a chainsaw at rallies to symbolize his plans to slash government spending, dressed up as a superhero who sang about fiscal policy, and told voters that his five cloned English mastiffs, which he reportedly consults in telepathic conversations, are his "best strategists." He pledged to eliminate the nation's central bank, derided climate change as a socialist conspiracy, and assailed Pope Francis, the first Argentine Pontiff, as a "leftist son of a bitch." Last November, he won in a landslide.