This is what Greece can be

"This is Greece." This oft-used excuse gets on my nerves and I apologize for using it here, but I just cannot come up with a better alternative.

I understand how hard it is to rule this country. I also live here, after all. Anyone brave enough to sit in the driver's seat is soon faced with madness. Former socialist prime minister Costas Simitis, for example, went through all sorts of tribulations just so that the Acropolis Museum could get the go-ahead. More recently, former conservative premier Costas Karamanlis faced a similar challenge with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. Both projects are the talk of the town today, but getting them off the ground took a lot of hard work and political capital, but also a high level professionalism.

The this-is-Greece mantra serves to rationalize inertia, the absence of courage, the inability to break with vested...