Sounding Off...
He is a leader who previously enjoyed overwhelming support from his followers, a golden boy whose grasp on power has gone from strength to strength, but who has in recent weeks faced a crisis that has threatened his position like none before, his influence leaking away because of the common knowledge that his contract will not be renewed.
The question is, am I talking about Tony Blair, George W Bush or Alex Ferguson? All three have suffered similar fates over the last few weeks, and each one’s job now looks more precarious than ever. On top of the dip in personal performances, all have had personnel problems with their star performers.
David Blunkett has continued in his quest to perfect the art of the dignified resignation; Dick Cheney has begun to realise that “Scooter who?” is not the most effective defence in the face serious accusations against his personal chief-of-staff; while Roy Keane has decided that the best way to motivate the players which he captains is effectively to tell them they’re not worthy to clean his boots.
So what next for each of these global ‘big players’ (OK, maybe not Blair)? Our Prime Minister faced a tough choice about whether to stick to hig guns before the vote on terror legislation last night. However, whichever way he could have decided, he had actually played out the situation much better than many gave him credit for. By shifting the burden of responsibility for the plan onto the law enforcement services themselves (in effect, “But they told me to!”), he can only ever win.
Had his plan succeeded, he could have asserted his authority and basked in the glory of convincing an overwhelmingly hostile Commons to hs latest big idea. Even though it has failed, though, he simply has to step back, wash his hands of the situation and watch the blame get passed on to his political opponents if and when Britain is once more attacked by terrorists. Meanwhile, he can simply ride out Blunkett’s resignation and hope none of the mud being thrown around comes his way.
Bush, though, is in much more serious problems. The indictment of Scooter Libby is not only a personnel issue for the President, but is one that strikes to the very heart of his foreign policy and once again turns the spotlight on his decision to go to war in Iraq.
Libby was one of the main players behind the scenes pushing for this decision, and, apparently in his eagerness to see this come about, outed a CIA agent in order to help undermine her husband, a diplomat who had questioned the Bush administration’s previous findings on the trade of arms between Niger and Iraq. Soon after this came the embarrassing defeat of his preferred candidate for Supreme Court judge, Harriet Miers (coincidentally enough, the Bushes’ family lawyer) in the Senate.
Senators, apparently, have a problem with lawyers with insufficient qualification becoming Supreme Court judges simply because they are lawyers to the current White House incumbent. Alex Ferguson, however, finds himself in the safest position of all three. Having watched his team slip to embarrassing defeats to Blackburn, Lille and Middlesborough, he has turned his fortunes around in a single, dogged victory against Chelsea.
The question is, though, can Bush or Blair pull of a similar coup • a champions-beating performance that convincinces their critics that they still have that olds magic? Blair might come close if the terror bill passes without any more crucial amendments, but for Bush, it is difficult to see where that victory is going to come from. With damaging defeats to Republican candidates in the off-year elections on Tuesday, nothing seems to be going right.
Perhaps the best he can hope for is simply to sit tight and cling on to what support he can maintain for the next few years. For him, at least, that ‘Chelsea performance’ seems a long way away.
10th Nov 2005