T N Ninan: Plus change

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

Great leaders who define (or re-define) their societies are not supposed to be needed by, or even to emerge in, developed nations. Why do you need "great" leadership when there are no big questions to be answered""as in, say, Scandinavia? Yet, in the last few weeks, the world has noted the death of Boris Yeltsin, the retirement announcements by Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair, and the election of Nikolas Sarkozy ("Thatcher without the skirts") in France. And you have another gutting achieved by a George Bush nominee""this time, of the World Bank. Leaders make a difference everywhere, it would seem, and not just in societies that are still evolving and seeking to answer the big questions.

The instant commentary about most of these leaders would make you think that each one of them played a decisive role at a decisive moment in modern history. But if you combine the periods in office of Yeltsin and Putin, what effect have they had? It might be argued that we have moved from Russia with an empire to Russia without an empire (and the empire was lost, no matter what and who). If anyone hoped that Russia would emerge as a western-style democracy, that has not happened. If it was seen as a future free-market economy, that too has not materialised; privatisation created the oligarchs, now it is back to state dominance, and the free Press is dead. Russia, it would seem, is merely returning to its Slavic roots, represented more by traditional Moscow (strong statist leadership, the soul of Mother Russia) than by the town that was created as a self-consciously European city, St Petersburg.

Or take Tony Blair. Here is the most significant Labour leader of the last many decades, and the man who came into office a decade ago with high hopes, going out in a whimper. One London tabloid led its front page on the morning after with news of mortgage rates going up one more notch, while the subsidiary story focused on the running saga of a 3-year-old English girl missing in Portugal. Another tabloid had four giant letters superimposed on a lot of tiny type listing Blair's achievements: IRAQ. Sure, he achieved Scottish devolution, brought about the Northern Ireland breakthrough, delivered monetary autonomy and a period of high growth with low inflation""but none of this has redefined British society and its economy in the way that Thatcherism did. Which is why the big issue that stands out is the Iraq misadventure; and given the way he dealt with the subject in his carefully orchestrated stepping-down announcement, Blair with his 27 per cent popularity rating knows it.

Nikolas Sarkozy is an extraordinary comment on France. How many countries troubled by immigration issues would elect as president the son of immigrant parents? Or treat as normal the newly elected leader leaving the country to go elsewhere and mull over what he is to do next? Sarkozy himself promises a lot, but it is far from clear that he will re-define France the way (say) de Gaulle did. It could well turn out to be another case of "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (the more things change, the more they stay the same).

All of which leads one to wonder whether the contemporary leader with a real legacy is George W Bush""as a monument to everything that a US president should not be. The cautionary tales are about how not to choose a team (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz...), plain competence, and how not to tackle the big issues (i.e. make "war against terror" an attack on Americans' access to "liberty"). History is already being written in sorry tones by Bush's former cabinet colleagues. If Blair's success is that he has left the opposition Conservatives without an agenda, Bush has left his own side in tatters. The United States could change course domestically and undo the unhappy elements of the Bush legacy, but how do you undo Iraq?

All of which raises questions about a leader much closer home: Gen. Musharraf. Yet another case of "...Plus ça change"?