What Happened to Eduard Shevardnadze?

Back in the day Crazy Eddie Shevardnadze was our boy -- remember that? He was down with James Baker and George Bush the Elder and even Ambassador Vernon Walters, who used to quip that he could speak eight languages and think in none (too true, Vernon; too true).

Now, after two dozen years in power, Shevardnadze fell in for the old autocratic desire for unlimited power. Tant pis. But how did Shevardnadze go from being down with those Fabulous Baker boys, all presiding over the fall of the Soviet Union into being a petty tyrant from a tiny backwater?

As a rule of thumb, The Corsair believes that no head of state, no matter how good, should stay beyond ten years in power.

Now, if The Corair could be a benevolent autocrat he would make a modified Great Books education mandatory for all public school kids : Archimedes and Euclid and Ptolemy Math labs; piano keyboard lessons with music appreciation featuring Monteverdi and Bach and Beethoven and Coltrane; intensive biology labs with Harvey and Gray's Anatomy, supplemented by freehand drawing and painting of the torso and organs; African dance to get the blood flowing; kindergarteners can imitate and learn of cave drawings with charcoal; comparative world religions and myths for the kids' curiositas; and readings of the Analects of Confucius and Sun Tzu's Art of War and Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and Clausewitz' On War for political science as well as reading of the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the US Consitution.

Nah, who are we kidding, The Corsair could never be autocratic; the PC lobby and the teacher's unions would run me out of town faster than Calvin Klein can pitch woo at Latrell Sprewell during a Knicks game.

Oh well ....