As a national leader, what does Chen Shui-bian (
First, as far as age is concerned, eight US presidents were under 50 when they were elected. The four youngest were Theodore Roosevelt, 42; John F. Kennedy, 43; Bill Clinton, 46 and Ulysses S. Grant, 46. Tony Blair was 44 when sworn in as Britain's prime minister. Chen was 49 when he won the presidency.
Second, Chen entered politics 19 years before he became president, serving as city councilor, legislator and city mayor. When he was elected prime minister, Blair had been in politics for 14 years, having served as a member of parliament and leader of the Labor Party. George W. Bush campaigned for his father during his presidential bids and lost a congressional election, but he has only six years of political experience in total as Texas governor.
Third, as for a the shift in the political balance of power, Re-publicans had occupied the White House for 12 years before Clinton took over. Before Blair became prime minister, 10 Downing Street had been occupied by the Conservative Party for 18 years. Before Gerhard Schroeder ap-peared on the stage as German chancellor, the Christian Democratic party, led by Helmut Kohl, had ruled the nation for 16 years. In Taiwan, Chen ended 50 years of KMT rule.
Fourth, the disposition of the legislature. When Richard Nixon and George Bush were presidents of the US, the Republican Party was the minority party in both the Senate and the House of Repre-sentatives. In the early days of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the House was controlled by the Democrats. After six years in power, the Republicans also lost their Senate majority to the Democrats. Clinton lost Democratic majorities in both chambers of the Congress in the second year of his presidency. Similarly, Chen has been unable to control the legislature since he took office.
So Chen is not particularly young to be a president and his political experience is superior to that of many of his counterparts. He is not alone in facing an op-position majority in the legislature. The only thing that stands out as being to his detriment is that before his rule, the KMT was a synonym for "ruling party" and the DPP had never governed the nation.
Putting aside the issue of parties' experience for a moment, politicians who become heads of government through popular elections cannot be just ordinary or lucky -- their personal credentials have to meet the expectations of a majority of the public. It was through meeting such expectations that the likes of Blair, Clinton and Schroder came to office -- likewise Chen.
If elected heads of government attribute their failures in government to any one of these four issues -- age, political ex-perience, the shift in the political landscape that their election to office represents or the disposition of parties in their legislatures -- then they underestimate their own qualifications and overestimate the influence of the external environment.
Nixon, Reagan and Clinton were all minority presidents. Each of them faced all-out efforts by the majority party to sideline them. Reagan ranks seventh on the list of US presidents who used their right of veto most frequently. During Clinton's rule, the federal government was closed down twice due to strife between the White House and the Congress. Yet they not only succeeded in being elected to serve second terms, they also acquitted themselves well in both domestic politics and foreign affairs.
Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) seems to be acting as baby-sitter to Chen and the DPP. Those who care about Chen must not treat the person they support like a baby, as Lee has been doing. Otherwise, "a giant in opposition" may forever remain "an infant in power."
Wang Chien-chuang is president of The Journalist magazine.
Translated by Jackie Lin
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