Is this important?

There is a feeling around, which I share, that we know far too much about politicians’ and other vacuous celebrities’ private lives. Do I really want to know that the wife of Northern Ireland’s First Minister had an affair and, feeling depressed, thought about suicide, even if she is a politician herself? Oh how I don’t. Then again, if there is a matter of public finance being misappropriated the or, at the very least, money being acquired without any indication of a clash of interests, story becomes justifiably public

Do I care which schools politicians choose for their children? Certainly not, unless they also ensure through their votes that the rest of this country’s population has no similar choices.

In other words, it is sometimes difficult to work out where private ends and public begins. Each case has to be regarded individually and the assumption ought to be that privacy applies to politicians as much as anyone else, particularly if it is a matter of health. Unless …..

Unless important events are happening and a political leader’s health is of vital importance. This relates to a review in the Wall Street Journal of a few days ago of a book about President Roosevelt and his health, particularly in the last few months of his life that just happened to include the Yalta Conference.

As the article points out:

There is a familiar, almost immutable narrative to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life: A vigorous young patrician politician is struck down by polio at age 39, struggles to recover his mobility and his career, is elected governor of New York and eventually president by virtue of his grit and the press's willingness to play down his infirmity and, finally—in facing down the Depression and then Hitler and Tojo—works himself to death even as he gives life to a liberated world.

A quick look at the photographs of the three leaders at Yalta in early 1945 show that Roosevelt, the youngest of them, was looking considerably more tired and unwell than the other two. (Stalin was looking particularly pleased with himself, as well he might.)

At the time people did not want to believe that one of the war leaders should be mortally ill but since then there has been a great deal of discussion about the possibility that Roosevelt had, for some time, been suffering from cancer.

Why does it all matter? According to the authors, "it is inexplicable that FDR, given his grim prognosis, made no effort to ensure that, should the worst occur, he would be succeeded by a strong and capable vice president." Roosevelt's third-term vice president, Henry Wallace, was "dangerously naïve about Stalin and the Soviet Union; had he become president during the war, it is inconceivable that the conflict and the postwar world would have taken the same
course."

As for the inexperienced Harry Truman, the slowly declining Roosevelt got
lucky with the selection of his fourth-term running mate. "FDR's Deadly Secret"
doesn't assign a nefarious design to FDR's behavior; he was, though, making "one
of the greatest gambles in world history," hoping to stay alive long enough to
achieve his goals.

Indeed, America and the western world were lucky in that it was not Henry Wallace, the man known to be one of the Soviets’ useful idiots, who took over in 1945 and the worries about Truman (who was not actually as inexperienced as people sometimes make out) proved to be unfounded.

There is another aspect to Roosevelt’s obvious health problems. What was it he really wanted to achieve beyond victory over Germany and Japan? Had he even formulated it to himself? Roosevelt’s inability to stand up to Stalin was notorious. Did this have anything to do with his health and the heavy medication he would have been taking? Or did it have more to do with the fact that he was surrounded by people like Alger Hiss, a very close presidential adviser at Yalta, throughout the negotiations and between them? One can go beyond that and ask how many people around Churchill may have been taking orders and reporting back to one of the organizations in Moscow? British investigations into that issue have lagged behind the American ones.

Interestingly enough, the December issue of Standpoint carried a long article on that very theme but dealing with British politicians. “Should we know about our leaders’ health?” asked Jeremy Hugh Baron who has had a seemingly distinguished career in medicine though not, I suspect, as an ordinary physician.

The article goes through the many problems Churchill and Eden had with their health, as well as the ones Attlee did. To us it seems quite extraordinary that it was not just the public who were not told about Churchill’s heart attack during the war, he did not himself. Moran, his physician, took a lot upon himself.

So how much of Churchill’s inability to stand up to Stalin, how many of his numerous mistakes were due to his ill health and how much of it would have happened anyway, given the complexity of the situation? Should the public have realized that the country was being governed by people who were seriously ill or their substitutes?

The most shocking tale is of Churchill’s second premiership, which, many would argue, ought not to have happened, anyway, as Sir Winston was past the time, because of his age and the condition of his health, when he could have taken on something as difficult as that.

In June 1953, Churchill had his fifth and most severe stroke, which caused him to stagger and speak with a slur. But the Cabinet noticed nothing amiss. His left side became paralysed and he was driven to Chartwell. He ordered Colville to tell no one. Moran warned that Churchill might die that weekend, so Colville sent for the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rab Butler and Salisbury and told the Palace.

Ordinarily, Churchill should have resigned, as his wife wished, and the Queen sent for Eden. However, that day Eden was being operated on in Boston. It was held to be unfair to Eden if Butler was appointed PM. Butler could have asserted himself, but as on two later occasions when he might have claimed the post, he loyally held back. There was no way a peer, such as Lord Salisbury, could have been made a caretaker premier, so a conspiracy was hatched.

The first problem was the bulletin. Moran had prepared, and he and Brain signed, a tactful but honest bulletin: "For a long time, the Prime Minister has had no respite from his arduous duties and a disturbance of the cerebral circulation has developed, resulting in attacks of giddiness. We have therefore advised him to abandon his journey to Bermuda and to take at least a month's rest."

Butler and Salisbury vetoed this because medical correspondents would correctly tell the public that their PM had suffered a stroke. When King George VI had his chest operation, a bulletin talked loosely about "structural changes in the lung", and while doctors assumed correctly that this meant cancer, this was not widely discussed in the press
…
Butler and Salisbury therefore prepared their own bulletin, which the two physicians agreed to sign: "The Prime Minister has had no respite for a long time from his very arduous duties and is in need of a complete rest. We have therefore advised him to abandon his journey to Bermuda and to lighten his duties for at least a month."

Colville sent for the three press lords, Beaverbrook, Bracken and Camrose, who agreed to a total gag. Butler took the Cabinet and told them of Churchill's stroke, although this was not minuted, while the business of the state was conducted by Colville and Churchill's son-in-law, Christopher Soames.

However, surprisingly, Churchill made a remarkable recovery, chaired the Cabinet, again refused his family's advice to resign and, helped by Moran's stimulant tablets, made successful speeches to the House of Commons and the party conference: "If I stay on for the time being, bearing the burden at my age, it is not because of love for power or office.

The idea that matters of state could have been conducted by the Prime Minister’s secretary and his son-in-law, whose political abilities were never of the highest order or even half-way good defies one’s imagination. The fact that RAB Butler did not insist that, in the circumstances, the Queens should have sent for him shows that he was not cut out to be Prime Minister.

There is, however, no doubt that, as a consequence of all this shenanigans he country and the Conservative Party suffered.

Iceland government split

The inestimable EU News from Iceland brings us yet another piece of happy sad news from Iceland. One of the goverment coalitions parties, the Left-Greens have reverted to their usual stance on the EU and are now opposing Iceland's membership.

The Left Greens have since the foundation of the party been opposed to joining the EU but decided not to oppose an application being sent to Brussels after the general election in the spring of 2009 in order to form a government with the pro-EU Social Democratic Alliance. Since opposition to the joining the EU has grown rapidly among Icelanders with about two thirds against the move according to the latest polls. The EU application, which was only narrowly approved in the Icelandic parliament in July 2009, has also been very unpopular within the LGM. The party council is the highest authority of the LGM between national congresses.

What with the forthcoming referendum on the whole IceSave saga and general dissatisfaction with the EU's and certain member states' behaviour (Britain being one of them), there seems a fair chance that Iceland will escape the trap.

They really do not understand

It is astonishing how often one says that about politicians: they really do not understand. I do believe that may be the clue to the mess this country and our cousins across the Pond are in.

Readers of this blog may well have been following the run-up to the special Senate election in Massachusetts, where Scott Brown, the Republican candidate seems to be doing extremely well. I shall not describe here the various shenanigans the Democrats have tried to use, changing the state's constitution twice in order to have a sitting Senator for the Obamacare vote and threatening to keep the man in his place if the Republican gets in. All this can be followed on various blogs, such as Sister Toldjah and, of course, Instapundit.

The story that intrigued and amused me in a grim sort of way was of the TV debate in which

Brown also bristled at suggestions that the seat he was seeking was a Kennedy seat, despite being held for decades by a family member or confidant.

“With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedys’ seat,’’ Brown said. “It’s not the Democrats’ seat. It’s the people’s seat.’’

This story made its way round the American blogosphere in no time at all. Neo-neocon had some more details as well as the video of the exchange.

It would seem, therefore, that the problems with politicians are very similar on the two sides of the Pond (as if we didn't know that). They really do think that seats and votes somehow belong to them. The story above reminded me of numerous discussions I have had with Tory Boys of all genders who would say quite honestly that they really disliked UKIP because the latter was "stealing Conservative votes". Ahem, I would point out, they are not your votes, they are our votes. We, the people, owe you nothing; you have to tell us why we should vote for you; you have to win our votes.

Do they understand this simple idea? I really do not know.

The Bruges Group party yesterday evening

Well, OK, these pictures are not the greatest, mobiles being fairly useful as cameras but not the best. I think people can see who it is and that she is having a good time. In fact, the lady was in excellent form and all who were there found themselves charmed anew. Good many young people, who cannot possibly recall her heydays but still insist that she is their heroine.

Sadly true

The Wall Street Journal is running an editorial in which the recent Freedom House report "Freedom in the World 2010" is discussed. The conclusions are sobering: there have been many steps backward in various countries as far as freedom is concerned.

In particular, President Obama's policy of engagement (not heard much about it recently but I am sure it will crop up again) has not achieved anything except greater tightening of political control in the countries he was engaging with. As against that, the beneficiaries of President Bush's "democracy agenda" seems to have produced some beneficiaries on Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. I am not sure how long any of that will last with no President Bush to support that agenda.

Of course, adds the article, there are still many countries that are considered to be "free" and whose governments are freely and democratically elected. In the comments there are some interesting points as to whether democracy is really a measure of freedom or whether one needs a small, well-controlled constitutional government for that. This is a point that is well worth investigating.

There are also discussions about freedom disappearing in the United States but nowhere do I see the obvious point to be made about European countries, possibly because few people who read the WSJ care about them. Officially, we may be free and democratic as we elect our governments freely and democratically. But the truth is that the real government, the one in Brussels, the one that is gleefully imposing its rule on us all, may be free by most standards but is neither democratic nor accountable. So where should the EU figure in that list?

HMG has become lazier and more nauseating

This is not an attack on this particular government - I suspect the next one, if it is led by the Boy-King of the Conservative Party will be the same. Yesterday in the House of Lords, the all-purpose fawning europhiliac Lord Dykes asked a fawning europhiliac Starred Question.

To ask Her Majesty's Government what proposals they will make to the European Council to ensure the efficient functioning of the relationship between the President of the European Council and the existing rotating
presidency.

What followed was nauseating even to seasoned watchers of political shenanigans. We had a great deal of self-satisfied self-congratulatory meandering about how wonderfully well all the EU institutions were working with each other, how much they agreed with each other and how intent they were on putting the Constitutional Lisbon Treaty into place and ensuring that lots more of our money was spent and lots more control was exerted by those completely unaccountable institutions.

Any question that stepped outside this this aura of self-congratulation, be it from Lord Pearson of Rannoch or Lord Howell of Guildford was simply swatted aside as being of no importance.

All this gloating reminds me of the word hubris and we all know what follows that. This is not just wishful thinking - I am not sure I can be accused of that. But there is something febrile in this dancing around and shouting we won, we won, we won, all pretence at democracy has been destroyed. The people have a way of putting such hysterical self-satisfaction down. Or so history tells us.

Sad news

The BBC reports the death of one of the best film directors of the last fifty years, Eric Rohmer, a member of the Nouvelle Vague, who continued to make extremely watchable and sometimes infuriatingly Gallic films until just a year or two ago. I can't help feeling, though, that this comment was made by someone who has not seen that many Rohmer films:

His main works include the cycle of films Six Moral Tales. The third, My Night at Maud's, released in 1969, brought him international recognition.

His films are known for being almost completely devoid of action, featuring lengthy conversations between the usually young protagonists.

Pauline at the Beach, a typical work from 1983, features a 15-year-old girl's summer by the seaside and her observation of adult relationships.

Even those early films were full of small acts - no big fights, car chases or special effects but plenty of action though, naturellement, also plenty of discussion. Ma nuit chez Maud, for instance, which I watched a couple of months ago for the first time since my student days, is filled with discussions about Pascal, Catholic guilt, sin and sex. Heady stuff, I thought the first time round; not so much the second time. Françoise Fabian still looked good though; Jean-Louis Trintignant not so much, in fact rather creepy. Perhaps he was meant to be. Incidentally, both of them were in their mid to late thirties by the time the film was made and played characters of roughly that age, not youngsters.

IMDB has also caught up with the news. The biography section struggles valiantly with the whole concept of Rohmer's attraction to so many viewers and other film-makers. Somehow, I do not get the feeling that the person who wrote that enjoyed any of the films but had to acknowledge the remarkable influence Rohmer had even on people who did not like his work or found it fey and too languourous.

It would be dangerous to supplant the aforementioned "je ne sais quoi" with words. Without demystifying Rohmer's cinema, still there are broad qualities to which one may point. First, it is marked by philosophical and artistic integrity. Long before Krzysztof Kieslowski, Rohmer came up with the concept of the film cycle, and this has permitted him to build on his own work in a unique manner. A devout Catholic, he is interested in the resisting of temptation, and what does not occur in his pieces is just as intriguing as what occurs. Apropos to the mention of his spirituality is his fascination with the interplay between destiny and free will. Some choice is always central to his stories. Yet, while his narrative is devoid of conventionally dramatic events, he shows a fondness for coincidence bordering on the supernatural. In order to maintain verisimilitude, then, he employs more "long shots" and a simpler, more natural editing process than his contemporaries. He makes infrequent use of music and foley, focusing instead on the sounds of voices. Of these voices, where his narrators are male (and it is ostensibly their subjective experience to which we are privy), his women are more intelligent and complex than his men. Finally, albeit deeply contemplative, Rohmer's work is rarely conclusive. Refreshingly un-Hollywood, rather than providing an escape from reality, it compels us to face the world in which we live.

While I rarely have difficulties with Rohmer's films, I find that paragraph a little hard to understand. Indeed, I had to read it twice.

Probably my favourite of the Rohmer films I have seen is Triple Agent, which is based, more or less, on the true and horrific tale of General Miller's disappearance in Paris. He was kidnapped and murdered by NKVD agents as his predecessor in the White Russian Military Union, General Kutyepov had been.

True to Rohmer's preoccupations, the film revolves round the man who ends up by betraying General Dobrynin, though, possibly, unintentionally. Fiodor Voronin is a double, possibly triple agent, working for the White Russian Military Union, for the NKVD and, possibly, for the Gestapo. He is a brilliant man, who understands many aspects of politics that, for instance, his rather stupid French Communist neighbours do not. Yet, he is, in the end, too clever for his own good.

Perhaps, the clever clogs in the BBC should get the DVD of Triple Agent and watch it. They might learn some history as well.