Like so many other politicians in old age, it was the mission that kept him alive. It was not until the moment that he seized power, well into seventies, that he became real historically significant material. In many ways he reminded me of Deng Xiaoping who equally was one of the last men standing of a war of independence that was concluded in the late 1940s. Often a political pariah, always a survivor. And in the end when his moment came, he had realized that the hard line approach would in the end not bring about a viable, thriving and peaceful state. Introducing capitalism, abandoning Gaza: heresies for the orthodox base, yet no one else had the power and credibility to make such bold moves. No one else could have gotten away with it. And Ariel Sharon, with little time on his hands, rolled the dice, forcefully.

It is deeply sad to realize that Arik has been taken away in his finest hour. His new centrist political movement Kadima was leading the polls, capitalizing on the bankruptcy of Labor’s failure to achieve peace and Likud’s equal failure to let an iron fist look for a similar result. Ariel Sharon got that like no other and staked not just his political life on it.

Daniel Pipes makes the apt comparison to Pim Fortuyn in assessing the electoral strength of an impromptu political alignment and notes that such successes are almost entirely dependent on one person. What Pipes forgot to mention was that even after Fortuyn’s death (some nine days before a general election) his party scored a phenomenal victory on election day, something that many contributed to both the momentum the man had created and the so-called ‘sympathy vote’. The party’s success eventually fizzled, but his sudden death helped cement the towering statue that continues to influence Dutch political life, leaving some to argue if an uninterrupted career might not have given him a far lesser slot on the hierarchy of history.

Ariel Sharon may never be able to work again, yet the Kadima genie is out of the bottle and if even a perennial loser like Shimon Peres can turn the new party into Israel’s largest then Arik’s legacy will no doubt cast a very long spell over Israeli politics. Yet, his vision required personality and a brute missionary zeal, neither of which I have ever associated with good old Peres. That rare combination made Sharon the credible and powerful political force he was.

But Arik is not dead. Like Deng who spent his last decade in near oblivion, his very presence may lurk in the background, although democracies are not well-suited to have a strong man in the background dictate the ways of a lesser god. History however may have thrown that unlikely scenario into the hands of Ehud Olmert, who now has to carry forward Ariel’s mission, and with it the future of the state of Israel.

UPDATE: There is lots to read about Sharon and his legacy but his significance is probably best captured by Allison Kaplan Sommer (via Sari).