In Tokugawa days (1603-1867), criticizing the government was a capital offense. Rulers, not only in Japan but the world over, expected to be — and generally were — not only obeyed but revered, sometimes as gods, sometimes as beings only slightly less exalted. "God," wrote the French bishop and political theorist Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704), "establishes kings as his ministers, and reigns through them over the people."
Rulers were on the brink — Bossuet could hardly have foreseen it — of a dreadful thrashing, which started with the American and French Revolutions and continues to this day. Opinion polls and election returns make the point time after time — we hate, despise, distrust and are disgusted by the people we elect and call, for want of a better word, our leaders.
Where in the developed or emerging democracies stands a leader toward whom the dominant feeling is not discontent, disillusion, disparagement or outright contempt? Two places come to mind: In Brazil outgoing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a remarkably successful crusader against poverty; and in Chile, President Sebastian Pin~era, basking (for now) in the glow of the spectacular rescue of 33 trapped miners.