The year of banality and inertia

I’m fascinated, perhaps morbidly, by the exits from power of presidents and prime ministers, whether they leave with their honor intact, or ignominiously (tails between their legs), or uneventfully, riding into the sunset like the Marlboro cowboy. The long-awaited exit of President Aquino next year has no doubt played a subliminal role in my curiosity about official departures.

It turns out that the subject is treated with great seriousness in many countries. In the United States, when the departing chief of state has been a successful leader with national and global stature, he marks the leave taking with a farewell address, as George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower did during their turn at the helm.