Is “Sniffy” Livni the wave of the future?

As reader N. points out, Tsipi “Sniffy” Livni, Israel’s overwhelmingly underwhelming foreign minister, who was discussed at VFR the other day, is typical of the New Class running the Western world:

That Israeli foreign minister on Charlie Rose the other night could have been from any of the northern European countries (Germany, Nordic, etc.) or one of Hillary Clinton’s protégés, for that matter, albeit with a different accent. Friends of mine in higher education in mid-tier state institutions tell me that while it has always been a challenge to find outstanding administrative personnel, it is now becoming more and more difficult to find competent ones. The “boomers” are all too often obsessed with racial nose-counting to the exclusion of doing the job required, and the younger “Gen-X/Gen-Y” people need a tremendous amount of stroking, hand-holding and other attention. I hear similar things from people in certain industries, as well, and can only imagine what goes on in the Federal government.

West-wide, we appear to be suffering from a leadership that wants the “perks” of leadership (desk like an aircraft-carrier, corner office, etc.) but that is not willing to do the hard thinking and make the hard choices required of leaders. The dithering exhibited by the current government of Israel is a microcosm of dithering one can find in Sweden, France, Britain, and other countries as well.

This is not a “boomers are ruining the world” tirade, but it is very disturbing to see essentially the same people sitting in the US Senate, in the Israeli foreign office, in the British home office, the Swedish interior ministry, etc. making virtually identical errors on similar problems. I don’t know if it is cultural group-think, or something else, but it’s becoming more and more obvious.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 26, 2006 08:00 PM | Send