HONG KONG — His hair has turned white, but his voice is as mellifluous as ever and his wit just as eloquent and rapier-quick in puncturing balloons of self-importance and pomposity. It was a real delight to watch him in a BBC Hardtalk discussion on the economic crisis as he pricked pretentious statements of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan with a few well chosen but eminently fair words.
But I am worried about Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong. His talents and experience are being frittered away just when the world needs a politician with his global knowledge and, more important, with the battle scars to demonstrate that he understands the difference between high vision and grubby practical political possibilities.
It is time for someone to rescue Patten from the worthy tedium of processing through the streets of Oxford as the chancellor of its ancient university, from sitting in the secondary house of Parliament, from boring corporate boards and conferences, and from fretting about deadlines for his newspaper articles. Patten and the world deserve better than that.