Flexible Ms. Jourová and Gen. Pavel

Věra Jourová rejected quotas for women as a Czech politician but is now trying to become the EU commissioner in charge of gender equality. Petr Pavel will become the first Central European head of Nato's Military Committee, despite being old enough to have served the Warsaw Pact loyally as a soldier and member of the Communist Party. He will be in good company, because new Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was known in his youth for being anti-American and anti-Nato. Only an idiot doesn't change his mind, says Miloš Zeman. Or is there more to it than that? When writer John Le Carré appeared at the Hay Festival last year, he was asked whether it was difficult getting a security clearance to join the British intelligence services given that his father was a convicted flimflam artist. "You don't understand at all," he responded. "The attractiveness of someone with a semi-criminal background is practically irresistible," he said. "After all, you're looking for people with a broad sense of morality." Today's euphemism in politics is "flexibility."