What's surprising about the probable confirmation of incumbent United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon for a second five-year term is not its near-certainty. It is the virtual lack of controversy surrounding it.
If you judged the former South Korean foreign minister's first term solely by the generally critical news media coverage of it, you might be led to conclude that his tenure has been a failure.
And, yet, the probability is that the member states of the Security Council and the General Assembly will react to his formal announcement of candidacy this week with little dissent at all.