celebrar a mediocridade

In Global Institutions, Mediocrity Is the Way to the Top

(...) Barroso has turned into a tragicomic figure. Hardly anyone thinks highly of him anymore. In fact, many are now criticizing Barroso and spreading malicious gossip about his desperate attempts to solicit the support of his old backers. One of them, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who once helped him secure the appointment, now derides him for calling her so often. Staff members in the office of Swedish Minister for European Affairs Cecilia Malmström have said similarly deprecating things about Barroso.

(...) Ban Ki-moon, the former South Korean foreign minister, has been UN secretary general for the past two-and-a-half years. At the organization's New York headquarters, and elsewhere, he is seen as a disappointment, and as the wrong man to assume a prominent role and lead the global community at a time when the world's political axis is shifting from America to Asia. It has always been said that Ban is more interested in being secretary than general, which is precisely what he is today.

(...) The man who will be applauded next Friday as the new secretary general of the alliance, former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, is a conservative politician who promoted an anti-immigration policy in an otherwise liberal country. He was the lowest common denominator that everyone could agree on. No one seems to be troubled by the fact that Rasmussen, an economist, is not a military expert.