[JenB]

Bureaucrat? I don't quite see Denethor in that capacity. He seems a very direct man to me, not interested in paperwork or diplomacy at all. More like some sort of Spartan general, past his prime and forced to deal with things that are beyond his league. Rigid, unflexible - he can't adjust to new ideas or challenges, stuck in the past, when Gondor was greater and Mordor was less.

[TigerTale]

Bureaucrat? I don't quite see Denethor in that capacity.

I know he's not a paper-pusher. Perhaps bureaucrat is the wrong word--conjured up by the title of "Regent." But Denethor seems unable to get his priorities straight, and ends up running in circles, wringing his hands while the darkness closes in. He is caught up in the fantasy of using the Ring to achieve victory, and is finally made irrelevant when the results-oriented people show up and take charge. Perhaps his ineffectiveness is what makes him seem bureaucratic to me.