"He's been governing at a time when it's almost impossible to be a successful mayor.
As prime minister, he governed at a time of extreme financial turmoil, including the housing market crash and banking bailouts, before being voted out of office in 2010.
And in age-old questions of identities that have haunted the country — Kurdish and Turkish, secular and religious — the party has governed at a time when those divisions seem less pronounced and possibly less relevant to a modernizing country.
As long as super PACs remain legal, they should be governed, at a minimum, by strict disclosure rules that allow the F.E.C. to follow the outflow from their accounts, not just the inflow.
Busy dodging bands of marauding protesters, its ministers have been doing precious little governing, at a time when Thailand's exports are crumbling, its vital tourist trade faces collapse and unemployment seems likely to soar.
I confidently predict that Americans have so little experience of stasis or relative decline, let alone long-term hardship, that they will continue to take out their woes on various presidents required to govern at a time like this".
Governing at a time of war, terrorism and disease, and frustrated on multiple fronts at once, Mr. Obama finds himself trying to buck up supporters heading into a crucial midterm election season.
Mr. Blair today called for a "statement of principles" agreed to by all members, which would define what should be governed at a European level and what would be decided nationally.
The mayor is just lucky to be governing at a time when billions of dollars are sluicing through Wall Street and the media empires building their fortresses in and around Times Square, but the boom nevertheless bears a Giuliani shape.
As Corzine himself told me at one point, he would have preferred to govern at a time when he could have spent billions of dollars securing preschool for every child in the state, job training for every released prisoner, a universal health care system and so on.
