Dumbledore & Power / Serpensortia / Crouch Sr / Parselmouth

[Catlady (Rita Prince]

No: HPFGUIDX 189056

Pippin wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/189048>:

<< The point is, Dumbledore's experience taught him that he wasn't 
good at telling whether he was being irresponsible. No one in canon is. The clever people can always come up with ways to convince themselves that they're doing the right thing, or that it isn't important enough to matter. >>

Dumbledore -- not just Dumbledore, any Minister of Magic -- should appoint at least one trustworthy honest brave intelligent friend to tell him when he's being "irresponsible". 

For Albus, Aberforth would be ideal for that job. 

Fudge also should have had and listened to such a person, someone to tell him that his campaign of slander and libel against Dumbledore and Harry was ungentlemanly. Instead he listened to Lucius Malfoy. 

I suppose Fudgiepoo would have thrown a tantrum and accused his formerly trusted friend of having turned traitor. But perhaps even Fudge would have been a little less distrustful if the warning came from a person of his own choosing... The Minister should give the friend a talisman when giving the job, maybe a letter in his own writing stating that he wants his friend to warn him if seductions of power and being surrounded by sycophants warp his judgment, for the friend to show him when delivering this news. Maybe even Fudge would be brought to remember why he had asked for the warning in the first place... At least there should be a procedure for the Wizengamot to have a vote of no confidence to remove the Minister.

<< It's also problematic to say that Fudge was the only alternative. If the people of the WW preferred Fudge to someone like Scrimgeour because Fudge told them what they wanted to hear and Scrimgeour wouldn't, wouldn't they have objected to Dumbledore just as much once they found out what he wanted them  to do to stop Voldemort? >>

I don't know how they chose Fudge. He said he was only a junior Minister when 'Sirius' blew up that street and killed those Muggles, and we never heard of him being famous as a war hero or athlete, and I would have expected that only senior Ministers and famous people would be in the running.