A few years ago I read the book My Greek Drama by Gianna Angelopoulos. She tells her life succinctly, and sometimes frankly. Some passages impressed me, and two of them concern Kostas Karamanlis. In the first, G. Angelopoulou describes the opening of the Olympic Games, 2004. She enters the stadium with the President of the Republic, Kostis Stephanopoulos and the President of the Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, passes in front of foreign leaders who congratulate her, and arrives at her place, next to Karamanlis. Everyone was happy, he writes, “but when I sat next to the prime minister, he was speechless. After four difficult years of struggle, hesitation and success, everyone seemed happy to be in Athens. Everyone except the Prime Minister.”

The second incident occurred sometime in 2006, when the head of the newspaper Angelopoulou was publishing at the time, journalist Yiannis Paputsanis, met with Karamanlis for a full interview. The interview ends and right after that, Paputsanis calls her excitedly and asks to see her in person. Indeed, they meet and he tells her that as the interview was coming to an end, he asked Karamanlis what moment of his premiership he would like to remember later as the most valuable. After thinking for a while, Karamanlis leaned confidentially towards him and replied that he himself would choose the moment of his departure from the palace of Maximos.

Inappropriate gossip? I wouldn’t say so. And that’s because these two shots aptly portray the highly controversial personality of a politician whose career and activities are ultimately a huge controversy. Karamanlis started out as a young and dynamic leader who, after entering the political arena to change politics and rebuild the state, ended up creating a debt-ridden, degraded and shaky state. Who assumed the premiership at the peak of national self-confidence, to hand it over at the start of an incredibly ordeal. That instead of launching the country thanks to the large inheritance he inherited, he landed in the most abnormal way. And that instead of talking about all this, he preferred to remain silent.

I remember from childhood the campaign poster of Konstantinos Karamanlis from the 1977 elections with his photograph and the phrase “Accept chaos, build a state.” Perhaps the opposite can be said about Kostas Karamanlis.

Mr. Stathis N. Kalivas is Professor of Political Science and Gladstone Chair at the University of Oxford.