Has Dumbledore something in common with Lockhart?

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 82938

One thing that strikes me as I reread OotP is that Dumbledore may be coming
to the end of a long time when he was basically able to coast along on his
reputation.  As "the wizard that defeated Grindelwald," he's seen as the
natural leader against Voldemort---even though he apparently couldn't do
much about V-mort, and only a fluke caused V-mort's downfall.

It often happens that a leader who did well the last time around is the
first person people turn to when a new danger arises, even if the new
danger's different (we don't know very much about Grindelwald, do we?) and
even if the old leader's greater age makes him less likely to be able to do
anything effective.  A case in point is the Crimean War, where many of the
British generals had been very good leaders---in the Napoleonic wars which
had ended decades before, and which had been fought with different weapons,
against a different enemy, under different conditions.

While Dumbledore is far more competent as a wizard than Lockhart, and has
real accomplishments in his past, he may well have gotten rather past it in
the years since Harry Potter lost his parents, and his judgement may have
become faulty.  Not to mention, his duelling skills may be rusty---he's
_how_ much older and more experienced with magic than V-mort?  I'd've
expected him to roll right over V-mort in the Ministry like a King Tiger
tank squashing a sand castle.

Much as I despise her and wish that she'd fall madly in love with Grawp,
Rita Skeeter may have been on to something when she called Dumbledore an
"obsolete dingbat" in that article referred to in GoF.