Michel Temer in office: Assessing the first two years

In October 2009, the historian Luiz Felipe de Alencastro wrote that it was a risk for Dilma Rousseff to have Michel Temer as her vice president. Temer embodies the gargantuan appetite of his pork-barreling Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). It would be, as Alencastro asserted, the marriage between someone who had never had a single vote in her life with a professional politician who handles the congressional machine better than anyone.

On May 12, 2016, Michel Temer took over as President after pushing Rousseff out of office. He was little-known to Brazilians, had no national voting potential, and had come this far without needing to hug the less privileged, kiss babies on their cheeks, or fake empathy towards underrepresented populations. He worked his way up the ladder in the backstage – a terrain where few can match his skill.

In 2009, when Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and MDB (then-PMDB) were in negotiations for a coalition, Temer was not the first choice for...