Derided as a buffoonish figure of fun for attempting to keep dry while his England team failed to qualify for Euro 2008, McClaren is currently attracting far less media attention for steering Derby County to fourth from 14th in the Championship after a run of just two defeats in 15 matches since he replaced Nigel Clough in September.
Populists, of both the buffoonish and the sinister variety, have done alarmingly well in elections across the new member countries since 2004.
That is partly because Wilhelm cut such a buffoonish figure, childishly coarse one moment, ridiculously pompous the next and constantly changing his mind (while always expressing his views, often in scribbled marginalia on state documents, with violent certainty).
The opposition remains largely spontaneous and without a clear leader, but its animus is now directed as much against the hitherto untouchable Mr Khamenei as against his buffoonish presidential protégé.
A related difficulty is that open-minded observers will want to know why buffoonish impostors can pose such a threat to the great edifice of science.
Although many people criticized Chávez as appearing unprofessional or even buffoonish for his fiery rhetoric and his penchant for slinging insults at world leaders, he was in fact a very astute politician and a remarkable strategist.
As Rowan Atkinson demonstrated in his second Mr Bean film, buffoonish man-children are only funny up to a certain age, at which point they become creepy.
Nala and Simba's first-born has turned into a notorious caner, while critics have questioned the influence wielded by buffoonish meerkat/warthog duo Timon and Pumbaa and dismissed the "circle of life" as an "instrument of the ruling hegemony".
He is too buffoonish to serve as a convincing symbol of corporate greed and evil.
The film ends with a courtroom battle but Burton plays this as comedy, with Walter at his most self-deluded and buffoonish.
He did not elicit audience sympathy and was less likely to win the girl at the end of a film than he was to wind up the buffoonish victim of some quagmire of his own making.
