Prediction is dangerous and irresistible. Time magazine made one of the more daring gazes into the crystal ball 26 years ago when it looked for the leaders of the future. Prediction is dangerous because, though it can be self-fulfilling, it is as often self-defeating. The solitary New Zealander to be shoulder-tapped by Time in 1974 was Jim Anderton, then a little-known member of the Auckland City Council.
Those who knew Mr Anderton slightly better might have predicted even then that an uncompromising streak did not cut him out for a conventional political ascent. So it turned out. Mr Anderton, who entered Parliament in 1984, could have been in cabinet by 1987, and might have been Prime Minister today had he been prepared to work within the Labour Party as his benchmate of 1984, Helen Clark, did. He certainly had the skills.
But he waited too long before entering Parliament and it is tempting to wonder whether Time's prediction was partly to blame. After 1974, Mr Anderton rose quickly to the presidency of the Labour Party and was widely tipped to be the eventual successor to the party leader, Sir Wallace Rowling. He could have entered Parliament in 1978 or 1981, elections that could easily have given Sir Wallace another period as Prime Minister. But he held back, overconfident perhaps in his destiny.
In 1983 David Lange challenged Sir Wallace for the leadership and won. Recalling Time's prediction today, Mr Anderton makes rueful reference to the "fish and chip brigade," plotters of the Lange coup. Still, he has reached the penultimate post, somewhat later than he might have. Time can tick another one.
Some of its successful picks were not nearly as daring. Prince Charles, for example, had a certain inevitability, though even he might have given Time a palpitation or two in the years since. Senator Ted Kennedy was another with dynastic claims. Jacques Chirac, already Prime Minister of France in 1974, had obvious presidential possibilities and Bob Hawke, president of the Australian Labour Party and its Council of Trade Unions, was an easy bet for Prime Minister.
But who then would have picked Helmut Kohl to lead Germany one day? His party had just been displaced in power by the centre left and he looked a plodder in the age of detente. At least Time was not so outrageous as to suggest he would preside over the fall of the Berlin wall and German reunification.
Are people born to leadership or chosen by chance, being in the right place at the right moment? Time's survey was prompted by a crisis of leadership in the United States. The Vietnam war was virtually lost. Watergate was overwhelming the Nixon presidency. The Opec oil cartel was crippling Western economies. Both unemployment and inflation were on the rise. At times like that people can lose faith in representatives and look for false miracle-workers.
Time at least cast its net wide and selected sane, ordinary politicians in most cases. Consequently most of the names are now long forgotten, if they ever made it to more prominent positions. It would have been more daring, and dangerous, to have picked a handful of truly exceptional personalities. Imagine, for example, if Saddam Hussein had been the solitary pick from the Middle East rather than one of several.
It is chastening to note those whom Time did not pick in 1974. Not Jimmy Carter who was elected President two years later, not Ronald Reagan. It did not notice Margaret Thatcher or Mikhail Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping or Nelson Mandela. The leaders that emerged were better on the whole than Time predicted. And that is a comfort for the future
<i>Editorial:</i> Time can tick another prediction
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