There is certainly something that commends a leader who shows grace and poise in his/her public engagements. This would include the way they talk, the way they eat, the way they greet people, the way they wave to crowds, even the way they walk.

Leaders have been noted for always having an appropriate word or phrase for every occasion, to congratulate or commiserate, to encourage or dissuade, to approve or reproach. That is why some leaders are said to be polished while others are known to be curmudgeons.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy is still remembered by American historians as having possessed unsurpassed elegance and classiness, which was more than matched by the glamour and chic of his wife Jackie, and which raised that first couple (and their courtiers) to the mythical status of King Arthur’s Camelot.

The man who succeeded JFK, albeit briefly, was Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was known as a crude arm-twister on Capitol Hill. Richard Nixon, who also lacked the swagger of a JFK, hated this latter’s guts.

A lot of these characters were formed by their family backgrounds and the way they were raised, but not always. For instance, JFK’s Brahmin demeanour had nothing to do with the coarse character of his father Joseph, who could not have been accused of suffering from style.

The Americans have had a number to choose from, and one could add Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower among the gentlemen, while some of the others, some I say, could easily be considered to have been ruffians.

It is the same thing all over the world. The first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a near-perfect caballero, a piece of royalty, nothing to do with the current one. But Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi was crude in her methods though lyrical in her speech.

Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union would bang tables with his shoe at the UN, but his latter version, Mikhail Gorbachev, is to this day a pleasure to listen to, though he lost a whole empire in a weekend. Of course, we shall not include Joseph Stalin in this conversation, for obvious reasons.

In our region, we had the dubious distinction of introducing to the world one of the most obnoxious characters ever to become head of state, but even Idi Amin did not strike the outside world as being singularly outrageous because we had had other nasty characters, such as Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who was accused of cannibalism.

Since Bokassa and Amin, we have toned down somewhat. We have had in recent years a president who has called people and what they say “mavi ya kuku” (chickens’ droppings) and whose wife once stormed a newsroom and boxed the ears of reporters if they angered her or her husband; another who sent his daughter to give birth in Europe because he didn’t trust local doctors; and yet another who looked like he was about to punch the HardTalk host, Tim Sebastian, for being impetuous while interviewing him. Yes, these are our nasties, in our own neck of the woods.

Trust me, there is nasty, and then there is nasty. Donald Trump has been sampling some of his more colourful soulmates. He has been able to identify North Korea’s Kim Jung Un as someone he could do a deal with, if the circumstances were right, because he thinks the young man with the punk hairdo is “a smart cookie” since he was clever enough to take power at such a tender age. He says he would be honoured to meet the budding genius of Pyongyang.

Then Trump goes and invites Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines, who has admitted personally killing people he suspected of being drug users and peddlers. He has already feted Egypt’s pharaoh, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who took power in a military coup, banishing the opposition.

Trump clearly savours the company of his soulmates, people like Duterte and el-Sisi, and cannot stand such polish as Barack Obama exudes, for it makes him, DJP, look like a buffoon by comparison. And apparently he cannot use elegant Melania like the moon uses the sun to allow him to reflect her light.

Even Duterte is now saying that he may be too busy to meet Trump. Too bad only one part of misery loves company.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]