Taiwan's Little Big Man

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To reach out better, Chen says, he has reached in, seeking that emotional center. As examples of travails that built his character, he cites his 1986 prison stay for libel and a traffic accident--some say it was a politically motivated hit--that left his wife paralyzed.

The President walks softly, his black sneakers squishing along the concrete path between lilies and the white stucco walls of the presidential mansion. As he points out a sculpture he admires and some work he has had done to the house, his bearing is quiet, but always lurking is the authority, of both his formidable intellect and his high office. In these moments, as he shows off his newly remodeled home, he becomes the Taiwanese Everyman--successful, middle class, proud of his detached home and little garden. His wire-frame glasses, oxford-cloth shirt and chinos give him the look of a millennial cyberpeasant. If he weren't President, his sartorial choices seem to say, he might have risen to run a chip-fabrication plant or dream up a B2B application.

He has stumbled into this image, this sort of regular Chou appeal. He strikes most Taiwanese as being like them, with the same values and aspirations for his family and his country. Isn't that what you desire in a President--someone who thinks like you and understands the complications of everyday living, yet is equipped with the mental tools to solve national problems? Chen communicates that sort of pragmatic intelligence. He's a Taiwanese Al Gore, and that's part of his problem. He could do with a bit more Clintonian warmth and charm. He struggles to connect, which is surprising, considering that during his campaign he conceived and delivered a cuddly, cute sort of marketability--the doe-eyed A-bian doll, which by all accounts, helped him charm younger voters in last year's election.

The cuddliness is the trait that keeps him from seeming smarmy. A politician who comes across as having schoolmarmish intelligence without a humanizing mushy center can have an abbreviated career. We all want a bright leader but one also equipped with an enormous heart. Whether Chen has that is a matter of some debate. Even his wife accuses him of being a purely sectarian animal, of having traded family for his political future. "He's a great politician," she says, "but a terrible father."

A tireless campaigner, he is on the road again, selling his message of party victory this December but, more important, selling the plucky little A student from Hsi-chuang. Only now he wants to be the popular kid instead of the smart kid, the one you want to hang out with rather than the one whose homework you want to borrow.

The helicopter sets down in Nantou County, next to a roadside restaurant where the waitresses and cooks have all come to stand by the road. The President and his entourage are hustled into waiting Ford Econoline vans and driven to Shi To National Park, where they attend a ceremony honoring efforts to rebuild after the September 1999 earthquake. Under a stained blue-red-and-white canopy, the President listens as Nantou's deputy mayor explains how they had to bore through rocks to reopen the highway.

Then Chen addresses the small crowd under the canopy, straining to find that memorable tone, his voice modulating through tenor registers as he praises the community for pulling together. He has done a hundred of these stump speeches, dedicating elementary schools, christening buildings, opening military bases. What he is saying is by now rote, the usual praise for Taiwan and the spirit of its people. The people seem to be listening, but they sit on their hands. Then it starts raining, and Chen's words are lost in the patter of drops on the canopy roof.