Would Mr Jaruzelski's father have considered him one too?
"She had considered him a mentor," he said.
In elections three years later, she endorsed Mr. Barak, saying her husband had considered him his successor.
Sprint said that it considered Mr. Sears to be an independent director and would have considered him independent going forward.
"If he had made some kind of threatening maneuver, we might have considered him a threat," he said.
In voting both ways on the issue, Mr. Lazio infuriated union officials, many of whom had considered him an ally.
No one would have considered him a "No 2 pick" for next week's New Hampshire primary, she added.
This concern about national image is a major reason some of Mr. Islam's supporters believe the government may have considered him a threat.
"Rumsfeld may have considered him too wimpy, because he was always smiling, and just too nice for the tough job," Ken Adelman, of the Defense Policy Board, told me.
The imperial family seems to have considered him something of an embarrassment, and he was long left to his own private studies and amusements.
