A couple of interesting stories today. This brief one from the BBC has Paul Krugman praising Gordon Brown's economic policies, as he defines Britain's economy as the best in Europe (though this may, indeed, end up being faint praise indeed - for Europe is lurching horribly to the right and the politics of race is beginning to persecute us once more).
Meanwhile, a report published in this morning's El País (original Spanish here, English translation via Google here) shows how it's possible to have the best brain in the class and still not have that curiously necessary ability to find real friends anywhere.
I am, for some strange reason, reminded of Nixon in that exchange at the end of the film "Frost/Nixon", where the now ex-president suggests he should've been the rigorous TV interviewer and Frost the hand-squeezing politician, instead of the other way round.
On the other hand, perhaps, in his own way, Frost was a politician of sorts.
The truth of the matter is that getting it right doesn't mean people are going to love you. Perhaps a better analogy is World War II and how the British people dispensed with Churchill. The recent European elections will most likely be politics' Dunkirk. As the economy resurfaces from its dismal and miserable cruelties, it will be down to other politicians to reap the positives of Brown's wisdom and steadfastness.
He will not win at the next general election, but he will have a place in history.
That of the man who knew how to pick up the terrible pieces through an insider's knowledge of just how everything functioned.
Everything, that is, except telegenic smalltalk.
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