'Why was I born with such contemporaries?' George Bernard Shaw's question from The Dark Lady of the Sonnets possesses a new urgency today, given the dismal state of contemporary political leadership. For instance, Britain's currently led by a man who once conspired to have thugs beat up a journalist.
Back in 1990, Boris Johnson was recorded chatting with a fellow old Etonian called Darius Guppy. Guppy explained that he wasn't going to have the offending reporter killed but would just organise some goons to give him 'a couple of black eyes' and a 'cracked rib'. Johnson duly agreed to supply the man's address: 'Okay, Darry, I said I'll do it. I'll do it, don't worry.'
How can Johnson still be in politics? More to the point, how can he be Prime Minister? Part of the answer surely pertains to the widespread perception of him as a buffoon, a floppy-haired attention seeker who doesn't mean anything he says.
Something similar might be said about the man in charge on the other side of the Atlantic. On Tuesday, Philip Rucker from the Washington Post asked US President Donald Trump if he was thinking about climate change. 'I think about it all the time, Phil,' the President replied. 'And, honestly, climate change is very important to me. And, you know, I've done many environmental impact statements over my life, and I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear, clean water and clean air. That's a big part of climate change.'
The answer, as another Washington Post writer noted, raised the real possibility that the Leader of the Free World doesn't actually understand what climate change means — though, of course, with Trump one never really knows.
In Australia, Scott Morrison succeeds through a similar program of deliberate expectation management, artfully presenting himself as a 'daggy dad', a suburban everyman more inclined to gormless sporting enthusiasms ('Go Sharks!') than affairs of state. Across the world, the same phenomenon can be discerned, with the highest offices filled by the lowest characters, politicians who market themselves, more or less openly, as anti-statesmen rather than leaders.
Johnson's example warrants closer examination given his own repeated invocation of Churchill, a name that inevitably arises when the topic turns to political leadership. In his 2014 book The Churchill Factor, Johnson presents Sir Winston's life as essentially a precursor to his own career.
"That's one reason why contemporary politics devolves into a clown show. Incapable of