The United States is unique among the nations of the world in that it hardly seems that they finish a national election then candidates are already lining up ready for the next one four years later. Since President Clinton left the White House in January of 2001, the widely accepted wisdom was that his wife Hillary Clinton would run in 2008.

Nicholas Sarkozy is president-elect of France, but that does not mean he will be able to lead. There are four conditions necessary for an individual to lead an organization, and Sarkozy has only fulfilled the first - position. The other three necessary conditions are period, people, and place.

The defeat of the French Socialist Party candidate for president, Segolene Royal, seems to have slowed what columnist Dick Morris called "the seemingly irresistible momentum of female candidates worldwide." Indeed, after Angela Merkel was elected chancellor of Germany, Michelle Bachalet won the Chilean presidency and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took Liberia's presidency, it certainly appeared that wome

Yesterday the New York Times reported that thirty-four first-year business graduate students at Duke University cheated on a take-home final exam. The university is still reeling over a highly publicized case of a rape allegation involving its lacrosse team last year that has just been dismissed, and the last thing they would need is more high profile problems.

If ever an individual represents leadership conditions, it is Boris Yeltsin. A man of modest abilities, he had served in various posts within the Soviet system including the mayor of Moscow in the late 1980s. However, he had been a critic of the slow progress of reform under Mikhail Gorbachev and as a result found himself put on the shelf by the powers that be.