He managed to stay away from the extremists on all sides and see things as they were rather than as he might have liked them to be.
When they were opening up Oman to tourism he said "there is no point in building another Dubai - we'd have to import all the materials and all the workers - and all the people to run the hotels -. And all the profits would leave the country." So he was in favour of "discerning" tourism - ie the well off. It used to be that if you were Swiss you paid around US$ 10 for a tourist visa - but it was near $ 100 if you were a Brit ....... he knew his tourists did Qaboos................
And he was blessed with enough oil to be comfortable but not so much as to completely dominate the whole picture......