When the Taioseach appeared on a ‘Newsweek’ list of the world’s top 10 leaders this week, the selective thinking behind his nomination brought some other historical giants to mind
THE NEWS THAT Brian Cowen has been deemed one of the world's 10 most respected leaders by Newsweekmagazine was met with some incredulity here last week. The Taoiseach was singled out for "prescribing harsh medicine" and pushing through "austerity packages drastic enough to win the admiration of the international community". But reporter William Underhill scolds the Irish electorate for not "showing much gratitude".
It need hardly be pointed out that while prescribing harsh medicine is a thankless task, a leader is particularly unlikely to be thanked when they were partially responsible for the illness in the first place – something Underhill neglects to point out. As such, Newsweekis being a tad selective about the criteria on which it is judging Cowen. But this is small potatoes in the selective praise stakes. Here are just some of the leaders whose achievements have been overshadowed by their flaws, misjudgments and, well, crimes.
BENITO MUSSOLINI
AchievementGetting the trains to run on time
The prototypical beneficiary of misplaced praise, Il Duce still gets an inordinate amount of credit for whipping the Italian rail network into shape, conveniently glossing over the whole fascism thing. Inattentive history students could be forgiven for thinking the Italian dictator was merely a glorified Fat Controller.
BORIS YELTSIN
AchievementReforming post-communist Russia
As the man who precipitated the end of the USSR, Yeltsin was always going to be fondly thought of in the West, particularly after his zealous introduction of free-market reforms to the Russian economy. Unfortunately, that process of reform is now a study in how not to run an economy in transition. The only winners were the oligarchs, while the general population saw its standard of living fall. The fact that Yeltsin was drunk at the wheel while this happened hasn’t helped his legacy.
RAFAEL TRUJILLO
AchievementVisionary environmentalist
Latin American dictators don’t get much more tyrannical than Rafael Trujillo, whose long rule over the Dominican Republic, from 1930 until he was assassinated, in 1961, was marked by massacres, brutal oppression and a personality cult. Still, he founded the country’s nature-reserve system, thus preserving huge amounts of forestry, unlike neighbouring Haiti, which has lost nearly all its trees. Trujillo’s successor, the only slightly less authoritarian Joaquín Balaguer, continued his policies, and today nearly a third of the Dominican Republic is a nature reserve.
ALBERTO FUJIMORI
AchievementStamping out terrorism
Peru’s colourful former prime minister is currently in prison for – deep breath – authorising kidnapping and murder; and for human-rights violations and bribery. He did, however, succeed in defeating the dreaded Shining
Path terrorist group. Given the current vogue for anti-terrorist policies at the expense of civil liberties, he was probably just ahead of his time.
FIDEL CASTRO
AchievementHealth care for all
Forget harsh medicine, Castro focused on the real deal. His blithe approach to human rights and his authoritarian approach to dissent, not to mention the interminable speeches, will always give Castro students pause, but when it comes to providing value-for-money healthcare to his citizens he truly was top class. Despite that, even those people who cite Cuba’s relatively low infant-mortality rate probably like Fidel mainly for his indefatigable resistance to decades of US hostility.
FERDINAND MARCOS
AchievementDeveloped infrastructure
There’s not much glamour in building roads, bridges and electrical grids, but when you’re in charge of the Philippines in the 1960s it’s not a bad idea at all. Altogether less praiseworthy were Marcos’s kleptocratic tendencies and assassinations of political rivals. It says a lot about western indifference to international affairs that he’ll probably be remembered for his wife’s shoe collection.
GEORGE W BUSH
AchievementClearing brush in Crawford
From the most visible disasters (Iraq, not catching Osama bin Laden, Hurricane Katrina) to more mundane failures (No Child Left Behind leaving children behind, the Clear Skies Act reducing pollution controls), Dubya doesn’t have too much to recommend him. But if we restrict our evaluation to his engagement in the Sisyphean task of clearing brush from his ranch in Crawford, we can see his leadership in a whole new light: unwavering in pursuit of a pointless goal.