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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.

Ok, I understand what you're saying then. Denethor's a dinosaur - he can't change, he can't even release power to those more capable of using it. He's very selfish - look at him, commiting suicide before his city has fallen, trying to take his last son with him. I don't despise him, but he's not a hero, by any means. Perhaps in a peaceful time he would never have shown his failings, but in difficult times, we see people for what they are, as someone's already said. I don't like what I see in Denethor.