A year after his high moment in 2004, Karl Rove, “Boy Genius,” fell into utter disgrace. His privatization scheme fell flat; the Iraq war proved to be unwinnable; Hurricane Katrina; Harriet Miers; and Bush´s poll numbers dropped lower than any president in history.
It turned out, Rove was appallingly inept at turning his visions into reality. And this illustrates a simple piece of political wisdom: getting into office and governing once you're there, are two different skills indeed. Dividing the country proved effective campaign strategy, but terrible governance principle. Karl Rove´s fall reminds us that a great politician is not always – and not often – a great leader.
Hillary Clinton, by all consensus, is a great politician. She and her husband control the machinery of the Democratic party, and insiders from the outset believed her nomination to be inevitable. If the measure of a president were, as Clinton wishes us to believe, a matter of experience as a politician, then she deserves to win. And Barack Obama, by that standard, could have waited to run for presidency.
However, the case for Obama rests on the assumption that he could not wait to run. That his skills are not as a politician but as a leader and that this specific moment in American history, when the world and our role within it is shifting – “the urgency of now” as he likes to say – uniquely calls for a world leader, rather than world politician.
For fifty years, the politics of the Baby Boom generation has defined our political discourse. From the creation of a capitalist, democratic world-order after World War II, to the advances of Civil liberties and the triumph of West in the Cold War, the post-WWII generation´s particular brand of optimism – that the evil can be and must be combated – has wielded force with great success...... continue reading here
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