...and he bestrode the world like a titan

Don't know if bestrode is a word or not, but if it isn't, then it should be.
Once again I was bombing up'n'down the paddock today, listening to the steam-powered wireless. This time I was listening to Macca's show. He read out an editorial comment from a magazine that I have never heard of, Sydney Business. Due to my rigid policy of never carrying out research or bothering to find out any actual facts I don't know the precise wording of the quote that got my attention, but it went a little something like this..one, two,...one, two, three, four "It's been ten years since any Australian politician made a truly visionary speech, one which was focused on the big picture...what Australia stands for and where it is headed."
This got me to thinking, where are the statesmen? Not just in Oz, but all over the world politicians have gotten smaller. Smaller in their ambition, smaller in their vision and smaller in their morality. Our country has only produced two Prime Ministers with anything like statesman-like qualities and they couldn't be further apart in the Oz political spectrum. 'Pig-Iron' Bob Menzies was disappointing as a war-time leader, too prepared to save the Empire while losing Australia. However, he was truly great as a post-war inspiration to his followers. Like a lot of conservative politicians of his era, Bob was more concerned with the act of ruling than he was with the outcome of his ruling, save only that the dreaded reds must not be allowed to govern.
'God' Whitlam, on the other hand, wanted to change, if not the world, then at least Oz. Witness the two-man cabinet. I'm no economist or social historian, so I'll leave it to others to pretend to know whether, in the long term, the rule of 'God' was A Good Thing or not. Opinions are divided, to say the least.
As an aside, neither of these ranks as a podium-getter in my list of best P.M.'s.
Restricting myself to the last hundred years, I can think of only two or three great statesmen. Churchill is an obvious choice, despite a poor showing in WW1. FDR was inspirational. Gandhi ditto. JFK, like Kurt Cobain, was raised to greatness post-mortem. Mandela's icon status should probably elevate him to the Hall Of Fame, but I can't help feeling that a lot of his 'greatness' is generated by the media. And a remarkably vengeanceless soul.
I see no prospect in the current crop. Domestically, Mr. Howard is probably Australia's most effective politician ever, but that is a different thing. He is too mean-spirited to be a statesman, despite channeling the spirit of Menzies through his eyebrows. Latham has the necessary degree of arrogance, but he too lacks the vision.
Overseas, Blair is too slimy and car-salesman slick, while GWB is incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together without outside help.
I suppose that it's the inevitable outcome of living in an age where mediocrity is celebrated that the mediocre now make up our ruling classes.