Bolsonaro’s increasingly empty diary a sign of his political isolation

Roughly 15 months away from the 2022 election, Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro appears to be losing his grip on institutional power in the capital. As the public perception of his government corrodes amid its disastrous Covid-19 response and the involvement of key administration figures in alleged vaccine corruption scandals, his once improbable congressional alliances are also beginning to disintegrate.

One useful indication of this decay can be found upon analyzing the president’s official diary: between January and June 2019 — at the beginning of Mr. Bolsonaro’s term — he held 224 official meetings with lower house representatives at his residence and presidential office; in the first six months of this year, Mr. Bolsonaro held just 60 — an average of one every three days.

While this drop coincides with the introduction of coronavirus restrictions, such a caveat is not applicable to Jair Bolsonaro. After adopting a decidedly denialist approach to Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, the Brazilian president has refused to adhere to rules on social distancing and mask use. It would be highly unreasonable to suggest that Mr. Bolsonaro’s lower frequency of meeting with federal lawmakers was a result of concerns of Covid-19 transmission.

More interestingly, the decrease in official meetings with members of Congress is concurrent with a dramatic drop in the government’s approval ratings. Amid a pandemic that has killed over 540,000 Brazilians, skyrocketing inflation, corruption allegations, and a widespread increase...