What I learned from reading the memoir of Brazil's second-to-last president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
now a Brown professor:
- Scholar-presidents do a pretty good job (see also: Woodrow Wilson).
- It's no accident that the Brazilian currency Cardoso instituted to solve the country's inflation crisis in the early '90s is named the real; the title (translated as "royal" or "real") was meant to reassure citizens that it would, unlike previous currencies, actually be worth something in the weeks and months after it was introduced. Diabolical!
- As much as the 2003 election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Cardoso's successor) may have freaked the crap out of the West, "Lula" (a Union leader of working-class origins) used to be a lot more radical...
- ...which is something I didn't pick up on at all when he took office on January 1st. I was in Rio de Janeiro at the time, and all the press coverage stressed how far-left he was, never mind that Cardoso himself was pretty center-left.
- My dad's flippant comments about how "people would just disappear" when he lived in Brazil in 1972? Not so much kidding on that account. (Dad was an AFS student who checked the "Send me anywhere" box on his application and landed in Sao Paolo knowing no Portuguese. We visited his old neighborhood when we were there.)
- Not even fame or democratic election can save you from having a terrible Wikipedia picture.
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