The real Lee Kuan Yew will be left to future generations to uncover

My differences of opinion with Lee Kuan Yew (which included views about the future role of China's Community Party and other matters) included one about the character of his political genius. For that, as any fair-minded observer of the founding father of bustling modern Singapore knew, was what he was.

But what was its nature?

Lee and his followers, which much of the time included most of the people of Singapore, showed the world that economic self-improvement had to have public policies grounded in best-practice pragmatisms rather than in ideological schematics. It also required hard-working citizens sharing the vision to get off the ground. Whether your political system was argumentative-parliamentarian, messy-democracy or shut-up authoritarian, the people had to be brought along and had to believe in the leader's way of moving forward if they were to give it their best.

"LKY" (as he used to sign his private notes) convinced people that his way - hard work, scientific public policy, political-party monopoly, clean government, and media as an ally, not a smarty-pants second-guesser - would work if given a chance. And it did. In his own phraseology, Singapore went from third world to first in almost a generation's time, never stopping for a rest, much less to entertain a second guess or tolerate second-guessers.

I once offered Lee the formulation of the late Isaiah Berlin, the great Oxford don who imagined political genius in the manner of Tolstoy. The great ones were either "hedgehogs" (one giant idea brainiacs) or "foxes" (a million clever approaches). Their political sense was either multifaceted (the ultra-alert fox who knew a thousand ways to survive) or focused on a single survival move. The wartime Winston Churchill with his many tricks was a fox; Albert Einstein, who could barely cross a street without help, was the hedgehog with his one world-changing idea.

LKY, only grudgingly accepting my Berlin-Tolstoy dichotomy, insisted he was a fox, not a hedgehog: "You may call me a 'utilitarian' or whatever. I am interested in what works."

He had a strong argument. Really good and sophisticated governance requires a map of multiple routes to the future, not to mention mature management of the present. Critics belittled the result as a "nanny state", but not every nanny was as competent and diligent as this one. Little Singapore's journey also needed a team of like-minded colleagues and a talented people, with a Confucian culture that could tolerate exceptionally strong and singular leadership.