Saad is an awkward public speaker. He comes off as stiff, artless, flat. During a visit to the White House following his father’s death and at a round of meetings with important Lebanese Americans around Washington, he struck many as in over his head. “It was hard to see him and not feel sympathy for him,” says Julia Choucair, who met Saad on that trip while she was an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He doesn’t have much political presence. You either have it or you don’t.”

Saad’s friends, and even dispassionate local journalists, swear he’s better one-on-one, that he’s intelligent and warm, cultured, even funny. But when we first sit down together, the paunchy man slumped in a chair, absently stroking his goatee, sullenly windmilling a black Italian loafer, just seems out of it.

The months following his father’s death—while emotionally draining for his family—were politically promising. Saad, a married father of three young children, stood arm in arm with his brothers, addressing adoring crowds of supporters. Then came last summer’s war, instigated by Hezbollah but made worse by Israel. The U.S. ignored public pleas from Lebanon to stop the Israeli assault, which laid waste to large swaths of the country, crippling the Beirut airport and blockading the nation’s ports.

Emboldened by its moral victory over Israel, Hezbollah and its opposition allies—prodded by Iran—demanded more seats in the ruling party’s cabinet, which would have effectively given the group veto power. When Saad’s bloc refused, Hezbollah withdrew from the government. Then it marched on Beirut in an attempt to bring down the government. The Hezbollah demonstration, in its sixth day when Saad and I meet, will drag on for months, paralyzing the state.

“When I was a businessman, things were straightforward,” Saad begins. He stares across the room as he speaks, focusing on a sofa-size portrait of his father. The mansion, which Rafik had built around an old stone villa, is filled with similar images, propped atop wooden easels and surrounded by funereal sprays of carnations. Everything inside is quiet. In a nearby room, men silently watch Leonardo DiCaprio in The Man in the Iron Mask with the sound turned down.

“In business, you have only yourself to rely on,” says Saad. “There’s much more freedom to make decisions on new strategies or new ventures. Nobody is guessing your agenda. But now you’re living in the world of politics. You’re dealing with affairs nobody can agree on.” He stops and laughs. “It’s a far more complicated process,” he says. “It’s a puzzle. And you have to fit all the pieces in the right place.”

Lebanese politics is a down and dirty business, dominated by religious and ethnic allegiances, petty concerns, blood feuds, and personal agendas. No one managed it better than Rafik Hariri, who marshaled a powerful will, personal charm, negotiating savvy, and suitcases stuffed with cash to get things done. He paid off adversaries and those seeking a handout to halt violence and get his legislation approved. He single-­handedly rebuilt Beirut following Lebanon’s civil war, restoring the nation’s pride and some of its lost luster. (He clearly relished his role as savior, telling Jamil Mroue, publisher of the English-language Daily Star, “This work is more satisfying than sex.”) But the rebirth came with a price.

Part of the anger and suspicion in the streets is aimed at the corruption of “Hariri Inc.” Saad has not only inherited this anger; he’s inherited a government rife with patronage and cronyism. To appreciate this legacy, you must understand how Rafik Hariri ruled Lebanon.

The son of a Lebanese orange farmer, Rafik went to Saudi Arabia in the late 1960s to make his fortune in the oil-soaked construction boom. He struck gold when he and a business partner landed a contract with the Saudi royal family. By 1982, he had done $10 billion worth of work as a favored vendor of the Saudi king, building bridges, palaces, compounds, and the nation’s Prince Sultan Air Base, becoming one of the richest men in the world. “Rafik was lucky, in the right place at the right time,” says Marwan Iskandar, a Lebanese economist and friend of Rafik’s. “He always said it could have been someone else.”

As Rafik amassed his fortune, his homeland burned. The civil war that erupted in 1975, between Christians and Muslims, was ravaging Beirut’s center, where Ottoman-era mansions, cafés, and souks had become a wasteland of snipers and wild dogs. Rafik used his wealth and political ties to stop the war and make plans to rebuild. First, as King Fahd’s envoy, he used Saudi backing and cash to broker cease-fires. He was rumored to have given money to opposing militias, prompting accusations that he helped destroy Lebanon to rebuild it.

Syria had sent 7,500 troops into Beirut in 1987 to halt the fighting and then decided to stay put. Lebanon had formerly been a Syrian territory until the French took it over after World War I and ruled until Lebanon’s independence in 1943. The Syrians, who have never accepted an independent Lebanon, wound up running its smaller neighbor like a mob syndicate, with a network of spies, army officers, and politicians all funneling graft back to their masters. If Rafik Hariri wanted to play, he had to play Syria’s game.

By 1989, Rafik—working with the Saudis—had helped arrange a lasting peace among the various militias. But the deal he cooked up also formalized Syria’s role in restoring stability to the shattered nation. Three years later, after much lobbying from Rafik, he became prime minister, with Syria’s blessing. Family members were worried. They did not want him involved in Lebanon’s fractious politics. “We were against it, as a family,” Saad says. “We all tried to talk him out of becoming prime minister. It was a danger. We see how things turned out.”