[WS:] I find it rather surprising how little interest this story generated on this list. It is all over international press, and Wolfowitz is a major villain in the Bush stable.
One lesson that can be drawn from this story is that intellectuals make poor leaders - too centered on their own vision and oblivious to what others think of them and to reality as well. Here is the quote:
"The real problems with Wolfowitz in high office, whether at the World Bank or at the Pentagon, are his shortcomings as a manager. That was one reason, as the journalist and Bush court journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his most recent book State of Denial, that Paul Bremer and not Wolfowitz, was chosen to be the US pro-consul in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
"The deputy Secretary of Defence was a thinker," Woodward records, "but he could barely run his own office."
That trait, by all accounts, has been evident at the Bank. He is not the hands-on, all-action, deftly self-promoting chief executive that was Wolfensohn. Nor is he a proven corporate manager, spewing out plans and bullet charts, like Robert McNamara, the defence secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and the World Bank President with whom Wolfowitz is often compared."
Wojtek