Brazil inaugurated Fernando Henrique Cardoso (born 1931), a world-renowned sociologist, president in 1995. Cardoso's success in that office prompted a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a second term in 1998.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso's political career lurched to an inauspicious start in 1978. Though no stranger to political thought as an academic, Cardoso, by his own admission, ran "an amateur campaign" his first time before the electorate. However, it was remarkable that he was able to run at all.

As a young intellectual with leftist leanings, Cardoso ran afoul of the government in 1964. In March of that year, President Joao Goulart was forced from power by a military coup as corruption and mismanagement threatened Brazil with chaos. Though Cardoso's father and grandfather both had been respected generals, the young sociologist irritated the new regime. Faced with certain imprisonment, Cardoso chose exile, first to Chile and then to France. After a...