Lennon's tragic martyrdom, and McCartney's fall from critical favor, made it seem as though one had been regarded as a more consequential figure than the other.
Given the dominant role that the economy has played in Obama's first term, the youthful Treasury Secretary is undoubtedly the most consequential figure in the administration after the President, but he's also turned into its invisible man.
As Mark Steyn observes: "The result is that, even though he's hardly ever in the souvenir photo line-up, Howard's a more consequential figure in world affairs these days than Chirac.
He calls Donnelly "a remarkably consequential figure in raising awareness" about the potential pitfalls of what conservatives call "social engineering" in the military.
"And I agree that as interesting a figure and as consequential a figure as Paul Ryan is, it won't be another Palin moment".
Reading about this confluence of the relatively banal details of Comey's life — his son played basketball at Kenyon — and how it led to his hidden social-media account reminded me again how even the most consequential public figures have private lives, and also that our private lives have a political consequence.
Mad Men is not The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, in which young Indy encounters and befriends so many consequential world figures one wonders how he could ever have any problem later in life that couldn't be solved with a phone call to the president.
"This country couldn't run without caipirinhas," commented a consequential government figure in Brasília, the capital, who would surely prefer not to be quoted by name.
As a result, three years after he left office, Bush remains one of the most consequential, though paradoxically invisible, figures in modern American history.
To have been the best at something in a sufficiently consequential way still earns historical figures — Albert Einstein, T. S. Eliot, Muhammad Ali — near-religious prestige.
