Divided democracies and the lack of leadership…

Democracies around the world have become highly polarized and are in a state of constant grid-lock. There are basically two points of view prevailing in any democratic dispensation. Either you are with us or against us! There could also be a third point of view which is not so black or white but gray. In political terms it means, we are not completely with you or against you, we are open to discussion. I would put these people in a separate category and that is ‘open minded’, on both sides of the aisle. Ideology could be one of the reasons for this divide. Indifferent leadership is the other reason for this deep disconnect. This is not a sudden development. It has been happening for the last 50 years. Democracies have not been producing leaders like FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi), anymore. I would not even put Churchill (Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill) in that August company. Republicans in America are ready to include Ronald Reagan in such world leadership, which he clearly was not. And that is the whole point. Neither Churchill nor Reagan were leaders of that caliber that the world would acknowledge them as leaders of international stature. The only world leader who has earned that respect in the last 50 years is, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a great opportunity to establish a ‘New World Order’. George Herbert Walker Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev failed to do that. Then again, September 11, 2001 presented another unique opportunity to America and President George W Bush. He failed to do anything meaningfull and change the world of politics. America has failed to produce a world class leader in the last 40 years or more. So has the rest of the world. There is no leader in sight anywhere in the world who could set the agenda to achieve great things in these wounderfull times. Let us take United States for example, the congress is equally divided and the executive is in constant conflict with the legislative branch. Supreme Court of the United States has been politicized since the infamous 2000 presidential elections.