Discounting Personality
FAIRLIE By HENRY
SENATOR GOLDWATER is, I suppose, something of an inconvenience; no one, certainly, has managed to persuade me that he is anything more, or that he will be anything more than an inconvenience if he is elected President. The death of Nehru is also, I suppose, something'of an inconvenience; but, again, no one has man- aged to persuade me that it is anything more. America and India, I wish to suggest, are both societies with sufficient internal strength to sur- vive the unexpected advent of the one and the long-expected departure of the other.
I have, of course, been in neither country to look for myself, but I do not think that this necessarily weakens my argument. I have been in other countries at moments when they have been suffering from even more severe political upsets, and my impression of each of them at the time, an impression which has in each case been confirmed by events, was that we tend today to exaggerate the importance of changes at the top in politics. I am not suggesting that changes at the top never matter; they always have some consequence, and in some countries, at some moments, they can have great consequences. The death of Stalin was obviously an event of great importance; so, although in a more sub- dued way, was the election of Roosevelt in 1932.
I am suggesting only that we react today far too dramatically to changes in personalities, and give far too little consideration to other and more permanent factors. We exaggerate both the good and the evil which men can do in a given situation.
For some weeks after the death of Pope John, commentator after commentator wondered whether his removal would mean that the policies which had been hurried forward during his Papacy would be reversed. There was never the slightest chance that this would happen. The Policies did not, for one thing, have their origins in his papacy, although he stamped them, at a fortuitous moment, with the mark of his own appealing personality and won for them an enviably widespread and favourable publicity. Not even the most 'reactionary' successor (if we wish to use such labels) could have reversed or even halted policies which had grown in answer to the needs of an entire institution. He might have changed the emphasis, the pace might have been slower, but he would still have been at the head of a Church whose own assessment of its needs had changed, not during one brief papacy, but over the preceding two decades.
Later in the same year, largely because of its dramatic circumstances, the death of President Kennedy was reported as if the United States had not, under his three immediate predecessors, pur- sued much the same generous and practically sensible policies which were associated with his rdgime. To me, President Johnson seems so much more recognisably a politician that I was, in fact, reassured by his succession, and remain reassured. A great democracy should not live for too long under the purple-heart stimulation of the kind of leadership that Kennedy was offering. Polities became far too interesting under his per- sonal court.
Again, all through last year, people were ask- ing what would happen in West Germany when pr. Adenauer eventually retired. The answer was never in doubt. Since free institutions had at last struck roots there (partly owing to his wise leadership, but even more to permanent changes
in Germany's condition) she would continue to develop in a way which both her needs and aspirations dictate. So it has happened, so it will continue to happen. I have, equally, not the slightest doubt that France will survive, without over-much disturbance, the disappearance of President de Gaulle. So one could go on. The death of Mr. Khrushchev, for example, unlike the death of Stalin, will be an historically trivial event.
To Nehru, then, and India. I can find not the slightest evidence, in any of the reports I' have read or in any of the comments of the 'experts,' that India is in anything approaching a revolutionary situation. The methods by which she is governed will presumably change—it is, after all, time that they should change—and her reactions to external problems and pressures will presumably change also—again not before it is time. Perhaps, too, the structure of the Indian State may change. Indeed, the death of Nehru, by making change easier, by marking the end of the first phase of post-independence government, may well make India an even more stable country than she was under his leadership.
This is not to underestimate the size of his achievement. It is, in fact, to acknowledge it. I think he created (paradoxically in such an avowed internationalist) so strong and self- conscious a national feeling, so deep a patriotism, that it will overcome all the centrifugal and dis- ruptive tendencies in India. (It is also to acknow- ledge the permanently unifying influences which British rule left.) The death of Nehru was the death of a man who had already done his job, and the next tasks which face the Indian people may well be tackled that much more successfully as the result of the removal of a personal in- fluence which had already become an irrelevance.
So, finally, to Senator Goldwater. Our pro- gressives have gone a little wild about Barry. As far as I can gather, his attitude on racial questions is not uncivilised, although his attitude on State rights may be a little inconvenient to some people; he did not suggest dropping a nuclear bomb on North Vietnam, but merely mentioned it among other possible courses of action, and then rejected it; and his general remarks about resistance to Communism seem to me very little different from the timely warn- ing which Mr. R. A. Butler gave at Bury St. Edmunds that the Cold War is not yet over, and that it is dangerous to think that it is.
I cannot, therefore, even for the sake of argu- ment, accept the picture of Senator Goldwater which has been drawn us. Moreover, even if, for the sake of argument,s1 do accept the tendentious proposition that Senator Goldwater is not the choice we would most like the American people to make, I can still not accept the further proposition that his election would reveal some dramatic change, or some dramatic weakness, in American society.
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