Bolsonaro’s Sound and Fury Can’t Hide His Failures

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s bet that adoring crowds on Independence Day would help him out of a tough spot didn’t quite go to plan. Tens of thousands did turn out in Sao Paulo and elsewhere, decked in the green-and-yellow flag. He responded with now-familiar attacks on the electoral system, his opponents and the Supreme Court, vowing he would never go to jail. “Only God,” he told his audience, could remove him.

But what was intended as a show of force revealed instead a figure isolated from all but die-hard supporters, relying on bluster and the looming threat of a coup to distract from the president’s inability to navigate Brazil’s messiest crisis in years, if not decades. Worse, by whipping up political ferment he has made it harder to resolve a deepening fiscal conflict and push through desperately needed economic reforms.