I don’t believe that Philip Delves Broughton’s explanation, expressed in the Wall Street Journal, for the mostly meager display of talent among the candidates for the French presidency holds water:
All those graduates of Paris’s famed lycées, Henri IV and Stanislas, and the products of its vaunted grandes écoles looked at what France had to offer and hoofed it, some for New York, a few for Silicon Valley, and a great thundering herd for London.
They have earned millions as hedge-fund traders and investment bankers, or by setting up businesses free of the mind-bending constraints of French employment law. London has prospered from their presence. They have bought townhouses in South Kensington and filled the private schools with hordes of little Xaviers and Sylvies. If some enterprising PR company were to set up a cross-Channel croissant-making contest, the winner would be as likely to come from Mayfair as from the Marais.
Maybe. How then to explain how weak the Republican aspirants for the presidency were? All of the talented have become investment bankers? I don’t buy it. For one thing I don’t believe that wealth is an intelligence test. My experience has been more the contrary: if you’re so rich why ain’t you smart?
Allow me to offer an alternative explanation. The talents of years gone by just weren’t that talented. The incredible visibility and lack of anonymity in a world in which every passing stranger holds a movie camera and can publicize his or her findings instantly just reveals how ordinary they are. As Montaigne put it, “No man is a hero to his value.”
So, we find ourselves in a world in which the dangers, challenges, and complexities call for gods and heroes and we’re left with mere ordinary men and women. From my point of view that calls for better processes and institutions rather than a search for greater leaders.
