If I had just a short time to live and could kill one person without consequences, I guess I'd kill Vladimir Putin. I'd be tempted to kill Rupert Murdoch, but he'd probably just be replaced by another guy like him.
My least favourite Prime Minister is Jean Chretien. One thing that angers me is the 1997 Kyoto Accord to tackle climate change. Chretien could have moved to ratify it right away, but instead he dithered for five years. (Pearson or Trudeau Sr. would at least have appointed a federal commission to study the matter!) He eventually did decide to ratify it just before leaving office, but by then it was too late to put it into practice: the Liberals soon lost their Parliamentary majority, then lost power. We're running out of time to slow down global warming. (Meanwhile, President Clinton ignored the pact for his last three years in office.)
As someone with a scholarly background, I'm particularly disturbed by the case of Henry Kissinger, a scholar who went over to the dark side, supplanted the Secretary of State in American foreign policy, and connived in war crimes.
Among dead people, Ronald Reagan made me believe in hell. He was the most appalling example of the "rhetoric as policy" tendency in American politics, doing long-term harm to the United States as great as any other president in the nation's history. (He had his enablers, of course.) And Margaret Thatcher was an unimaginative destroyer.
No comments:
Post a Comment