'Why was I born with such contemporaries?' George Bernard Shaw's question from The Dark Lady of the Sonnets possesses a new urgency today, given the dismal state of contemporary political leadership. For instance, Britain's currently led by a man who once conspired to have thugs beat up a journalist.
Back in 1990, Boris Johnson was recorded chatting with a fellow old Etonian called Darius Guppy. Guppy explained that he wasn't going to have the offending reporter killed but would just organise some goons to give him 'a couple of black eyes' and a 'cracked rib'. Johnson duly agreed to supply the man's address: 'Okay, Darry, I said I'll do it. I'll do it, don't worry.'
How can Johnson still be in politics? More to the point, how can he be Prime Minister? Part of the answer surely pertains to the widespread perception of him as a buffoon, a floppy-haired attention seeker who doesn't mean anything he says.
Something similar might be said about the man in charge on the other side of the Atlantic. On Tuesday, Philip Rucker from the Washington Post asked US President Donald Trump if he was thinking about climate change. 'I think about it all the time, Phil,' the President replied. 'And, honestly, climate change is very important to me. And, you know, I've done many environmental impact statements over my life, and I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear, clean water and clean air. That's a big part of climate change.'
The answer, as another Washington Post writer noted, raised the real possibility that the Leader of the Free World doesn't actually understand what climate change means — though, of course, with Trump one never really knows.
In Australia, Scott Morrison succeeds through a similar program of deliberate expectation management, artfully presenting himself as a 'daggy dad', a suburban everyman more inclined to gormless sporting enthusiasms ('Go Sharks!') than affairs of state. Across the world, the same phenomenon can be discerned, with the highest offices filled by the lowest characters, politicians who market themselves, more or less openly, as anti-statesmen rather than leaders.
Johnson's example warrants closer examination given his own repeated invocation of Churchill, a name that inevitably arises when the topic turns to political leadership. In his 2014 book The Churchill Factor, Johnson presents Sir Winston's life as essentially a precursor to his own career.
"That's one reason why contemporary politics devolves into a clown show. Incapable of addressing the increasingly pressing crisis, politicians turn their impotence into a selling point."
On some levels, the comparison actually makes sense. Like Johnson, Churchill developed a reputation as a chancer and publicity hound, notorious for his political betrayals and willingness to sacrifice others to his own advantage (as in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign he championed during the Great War). Like Johnson, he was a self-conscious class warrior who combined oratorical flair with overt racism, dismissing Indians as 'beastly people' and lamenting the squeamishness that prevented his colleagues using 'poison gas against uncivilised tribes'.
Churchill's current reputation as a giant of the 20th century stems, almost exclusively, from his ability to rise to the challenge presented by the Second World War, in which he came to symbolise, for many, the indomitable spirit of resistance to Nazi expansionism.
And that's where the comparison breaks down. Leaving aside the extent to which Churchill deserved the widespread praise he received, the obvious question arises: Why doesn't the environmental crisis spur a similar transformation? We've just been told that we're coming to the end of the hottest decade in recorded human history. Greenhouse emissions stand at an all-time high, with current projections suggesting the world's on track to rise by as much as 3.2 degrees Celsius, a figure that will render much of the world uninhabitable.
If the dark days of 1940 provided an opportunity for leadership, why hasn't the increasingly catastrophic breakdown of the natural world turned Boris Johnson — or anyone much else — from boob to statesman?
The Second World War represented an enormous challenge to the British establishment, one that necessitated a wholesale reconstitution of the economy. At the height of the conflict, half of the working population was engaged in the armed forces, the munitions industries or other fields essential to the war effort. But that transformation meant an intensification of capitalist production, rather than any sort of decline. Britain set about building more tanks, more ships and more guns, with the requirement for greater output trumping almost every other consideration.
That's the reverse of the situation today. The European Environment Agency just warned that the pursuit of growth at the expense of the natural world simply cannot go on if we're to prevent environmental disaster. In other words, where statesmanship in the Second World War depended on pushing production to the max, genuine leadership in our time would mean the opposite, a willingness to begin dismantling the economic order that's brought us to this point. And that's precisely what no-one in the political class wants.
As UN Secretary General António Guterres recently made clear, the negotiations currently taking place in Madrid — the so-called '25th Conference of the Parties' — represent a last chance saloon for keeping planetary temperatures below apocalyptic levels. Yet the event's taking place without the participation of the Trump administration.
The Chinse government might be in Madrid — and, in theory, committed to the process. But its emissions have continued to grow, so much so that they're now twice those of the United States. The same might be said about India, another rising force: ostensibly on board but polluting more and more as its economy booms.
The correlation between emissions and economic (and thus political) power places politicians in a strange bind. The welfare of the planet and most of its inhabitants depends on the curtailment of the carbon economy, yet national elites remain committed to its expansion. To achieve the latter, leaders must ignore the former.
That's one reason why contemporary politics devolves into a clown show. Incapable of addressing the increasingly pressing crisis, politicians turn their impotence into a selling point. Even Trump's supporters recognise him as a carnival barker, delivering entertainment rather than solutions. Scott Morrison campaigned in the last election on the basis that, unlike Bill Shorten, he wouldn't promise anything much at all. Johnson, meanwhile, pledges everything to everyone in an almost transparently dishonest fashion, like a conman who winks during his own spiel.
A fish, they say, rots from its head. The leadership we have now indicates the depth of the problems we face.
Jeff Sparrow is a writer, editor and honorary fellow at Victoria University.
Main image: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Donald Trump attend the NATO summit on 4 December 2019 in Watford, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)