There is no more predictable form of political analytics than the loud, extended complaint about the quality of contemporary leadership. For every generation of commentators, the current crop of statesmen is always a shadow of those that went before. Supposedly dispassionate observations about our fallen state are tinged with unconscious nostalgia, the tendency to view the past in sepia, the present in garish Technicolor.
Meanwhile, the accelerating rush to condemn the modern media inspires nothing but contempt. If Twitter had been around in the more challenging years of Napoleonic France, we can guess what the early 19th century versions of today’s blue-checkered comedy writers would be tweeting: “How much longer must we put up with this lovely little megalomaniac? He’s not Robespierre, is he?
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