The opening sentiment in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities remains popular because- when everything is going well - we yearn for excitement, and therefore for the best and worst of times. Now fires, crises and a pandemic have satiated our appetite for thrills. To continue the Dickens quote, we have been left lurching between the spring of hope and the winter of despair.

We need a leader equal to such challenges. "If these the times, then this must be the man" (or woman). In the absence of any one credible leader of calibre, we might try to assemble a composite. The exercise is a few notches more sophisticated than picking the captain of a fantasy football team. We need someone possessing attributes usually doled out among an entire team.

The first quality required should be solid common sense. For that, we could rely on Germany's Angela Merkel, a self-proclaimed expert in "difficult and uncomfortable issues, those that imply changes". Dr Merkel would demonstrate how to reconcile concerns about economic stability and social welfare, as she did during mass migration to Germany. Reliability would be attested by straight talk and unfeigned modesty with a streak of stubbornness tossed in to spice. If we wanted to mix a phlegmatic German with a laconic Australian, then we should turn to Victoria's Dan Andrews, who insists that politics should be "about everything still to be done".

Our second criterion should be competence, pure and simple. That talent would be proven by a focus on results rather than flair, on displaying a capacity to make the system work rather than any melodramas for the media. We would find a leader like that in France, not in its vain and brittle President but in the former prime minister, Edouard Philippe. Quietly, logically, cogently, dressed in a most elegantly-tailored suit, his beard whiter by the day, Philippe would tell us the truth. He has already done so on matters as disparate as rural speed limits, General Monash and compulsory retirement ages.

We would then need to move on to emotional intelligence, where New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern is streets ahead of anyone else. We stand in need of someone who can sincerely declare that "everything I've ever thought about doing has been, in some sense, about helping people". Ardern's response to the Christchurch terrorist attack set the gold standard for empathy. Making and taking a joke would also serve as a useful predictor of EI.

Emotional intelligence, however, must be complemented by moral clarity. There we would turn to Pope Francis. We would do well to apply to government the precepts Francis applies to his church. Shepherds should smell of the sheep, feeling and worrying about the concerns of ordinary folk. Government might cast itself as "a field hospital after battle", looking after people by relieving misery and offering comfort. As the Pope demands, nobody would be cast aside, work would start "from the ground up" and the wounded would be helped rather than quizzed or classified.

That list amounts to four leaders and four qualities only. A simpler task would be drawing up a negative list of traits and leaders we could do without, assessed on the basis of performance this year. Although too many leaders have profited from rising approval ratings, those polls reflect our desperation more than their competence.

We could not use authoritarian truculence like Narendra Modi's, imposing a national lockdown with minimal warning and exposing the frailties of an antiquated, overloaded medical system. In the same vein, we could dispense with the insensate vanity of Justin Trudeau's coiffed, floppy hair and quiz the Canadian Prime Minister more rigorously about deaths in his country's nursing homes. We would dismiss the crass, bullying denialism of Jair Bolsonaro, who seems to believe that no crisis is credible and no opposition is warranted.

Nor could we usefully employ any single one of the personality characteristics exhibited by Donald Trump. In fact, our composite leader would be an anti-Trump. Our leader would exhibit calm and control, empathy and sympathy, compassion and clarity, common sense and steadiness under pressure. On what single point could any fair-minded observer adduce evidence for Trump?

Nations enter a crisis equipped with the people they have to hand. We all have to make do. Our fanciful longing for the best and worst of times complicates that task, because our point of reference - for terrible crises, mass suffering, individual heroism and a happy ending (after a fashion) - remains the Second World War.

Then the cast was Shakespearean rather than Dickensian, with the audience "the great globe itself". Hitler impersonated Richard III: "Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end". Crippled, terminally ill, perpetually beleaguered Franklin Roosevelt was truly "such stuff as dreams are made on". Like Coriolanus, Stalin would deride "the common cry of curs", justifying his deeds by claiming that "our virtues/Lie in interpretation of the times". As for Churchill, he played both lead roles from Henry IV, resembling Falstaff but revealing pugnacity and courage worthy of King Hal.

Unlike the invisible but inveterate virus enemy we now confront, the Second World War represented Manichaeism for beginners. I suspect we reckon the world will never bring forth anything as good or as bad again. Now, 75 years on, fading memories, bracing moral lessons and over-simplified metaphors from that war still suffuse political discourse. Our composite leader would be shrewd enough to treat them with respect.