Today’s strongmen are weaker than we think

By Niall Ferguson (original source The Times)

“It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that strongmen now rule the world. The days are long gone when The Economist fawned over Angela Merkel as the “indispensable European” and the Financial Times hailed her as “the leader of the free world”. In Washington, as the recently honoured chat radio star Rush Limbaugh observed, Donald Trump is “Mr Man”, he of the three wives, in contrast to his potential rival for the presidency, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, whose only marriage is to a man. Fans of the British author Roger Hargreaves’s Mr Men series will have enjoyed this, for in many ways the president is an almost perfect Mr Man.”

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