"If you're going to be a credible player in the social-political realm, the first thing you need do is focus on the internal stuff, governance.
For these — this stuff of governance — Obama has shown little aptitude and even less interest.
"A lot of FIFA's needed reforms are going to be technical, wonky stuff that governance experts like to discuss, but which are not as exciting as F.B.I. raids or Blatter's resignation," Roger Pielke, Jr., a political scientist who has studied the soccer organization and its accountability problems, said.
Letting shareholders elect their chief executive, perhaps from a slate of competing candidates, is likely to remain the stuff of corporate-governance fantasy.
"I'm sorry this is dull stuff, but this is what governance is about," he said.
Institutional Rules, Social Capacity, and the Stuff of Politics: Experiments in Collaborative Governance in France and Italy.
Culpepper, Pepper D. "Institutional Rules, Social Capacity, and the Stuff of Politics: Experiments in Collaborative Governance in France and Italy". KSG Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP03-029, June 2003.
But the stuff alone cannot deliver human rights, better incomes, and accountable governance.
Inspiring stuff, certainly, but far from fully-worked examples of stable, enduring, empowering governance.
And the challenge becomes steeper as "the smartest guys in the room" begin to make their appearance, chafing to "strut their stuff" without board interference after a decade of being held on a very tight governance leash.
