The Comedian-Turned-President Is Seriously in Over His Head
"KYIV, Ukraine — It’s not hard to guess what President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine must be craving right now: one normal day.
The comic-turned-president surely never imagined the job would be quite so intense. First, he got tangled up in the impeachment of Donald Trump. Then he had to deal with the Covid pandemic. And now he’s facing the prospect of a full-scale invasion by Russia. . .It’s a gravely serious situation. And Mr. Zelensky, a comedian for most of his life, is in over his head.
When Mr. Zelensky took power in Ukraine in 2019, converting his TV fame into a stellar political career, no one knew what to expect. His opponents said he was so inexperienced, he was bound to be a disaster. His supporters thought that he would break away from the old ways and end corruption. His harshest critics claimed that Mr. Zelensky, a Russian-speaking man born in eastern Ukraine, would all but sell the country off to Russia. Others said he was an oligarch puppet.
Yet the truth is more prosaic. Mr. Zelensky, the showman and performer, has been unmasked by reality. And it has revealed him to be dispiritingly mediocre.
After his nearly three years in office, it’s clear what the problem is: Mr. Zelensky’s tendency to treat everything like a show. Gestures, for him, are more important than consequences. Strategic objectives are sacrificed for short-term benefits. The words he uses don’t matter, as long as they are entertaining. And when the reviews are bad, he stops listening and surrounds himself with fans.
He started brightly. Early in his tenure, Mr. Zelensky commanded more power than any of his predecessors had. His fame and anti-establishment allure landed him with a parliamentary majority, a handpicked cabinet and a mandate for reform. At first, it seemed to be working. .
[. ] Mr. Zelensky’s other major project, a campaign he calls “deoligarchization” that’s aimed at capping the influence of the very wealthy, looks more like a P.R. move than serious policy. Despite his campaign promises, no progress has been made in fighting corruption. According to Transparency International, Ukraine remains the third-most-corrupt country in Europe, after Russia and Azerbaijan. Anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies are either stalling or run by loyalists appointed by the president.
Corruption just doesn’t seem to worry Mr. Zelensky much . . .
That’s become ever clearer in recent weeks. As the West pursued megaphone diplomacy to discourage an invasion, Mr. Zelensky tried to downplay the threat. But this understandable effort to project calm and steady skittish markets was undermined by his showy style.
In a tone-deaf address in January, for example, a patronizing Mr. Zelensky effectively mocked Ukrainians for their proneness to panic and laughed off a possible invasion. The very next day, he claimed Russia might invade Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Instead of being comforted, the country was confused. No wonder 53 percent of Ukrainians think Mr. Zelensky won’t be able to defend the country if there is an invasion.
Yet Mr. Zelensky’s behavior, odd to the point of erratic, obscures a truth: He has no good options. On the one hand, any concession to Russia, particularly over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, would likely bring hundreds of thousands of people to the streets — threatening him with the fate of Viktor Yanukovych, the president overthrown by a revolution in 2014. Any decisive move against Russia, on the other hand, risks giving the Kremlin a pretext for a deadly invasion.
The show must go on, of course. The crisis continues. But the president’s performance — strained, awkward, often inappropriate — is hardly helping."
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