It appears that he was discovered in these roles by a local knight, who, having guessed right, and having a perfect gift to identity talent and nurture it, including nurturing him and his ambition, saw in him as one who could succeed him. Although his was an unconventional trajectory, then as is now, there was an undeniable authority to his overall intelligence and ability to act the part if called upon. It may be that by choosing politics, he planned to affirm his abilities to serve at the highest level of government, as well as a way of rejecting the notion that only those who were somebodies at independence could aspire and succeed in that pursuit. If politics was going to enable him to prove that a middling village lad is as good as the next fellow elsewhere in the country, to prove that he was not the typical civil servant who might only rise up to a mid-level status, to prove that he was an outlier, he must have reckoned early on that he needed considerable attention, discipline and dexterity to serve powerful men, those days, with distinction and loyally.
There are many things that distinguished him from his predecessors. For one thing, he overcame the disadvantage of insufficient privilege and means. Then an aspirant president, almost by definition, was someone who had been a chief or an accomplished teacher – not a career public officer: in effect one who had nothing else to do or nowhere else to go but to aspire to the highest office in the country. Second, as he rose in the ranks of the public service, as his ascent there had a mechanical rhythm of regularity, and he steadily gained a first mover advantage over others for the high office, even his potential rivals and detractors had to acknowledge their admiration of him, the way a previously skeptical but now an impressed audience does at an opera featuring an unknown artist, by a clamorous ovation! In fact, when he was abruptly promoted to the vice presidency, that last act itself became definitive, and confirmed the expectation that the country’s prospective presidency was his to lose.
