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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
June 27, 2010
They are the world
The well-dressed people in Toronto today, with the lights on them when they step from their limousines, are called "world leaders." Nobody seems to call them "statesmen" anymore. The terms are not necessarily synonymous. To join the former group, you need only power. You could come from anywhere; and, in a manner of speaking, not necessarily from this planet.Whereas, the term "statesman" implies a kind of craftsman, indeed, "statecraft." The word "state" comes from the same root as "status," and is also aphetic of the word "estate." Somewhere in this symbolic combination, not only in English but in other European languages, is an idea like husbandry. There is this patch of land called a country, organized into a state, and the government of it requires certain skills. See Plato, Aristotle, etc., for thoughts on what these skills must be. When you get to Machiavelli, read not only his cynical and amusing Prince, but his Discourses, and his History. (But then, read Francesco Guicciardini: for together, these two Florentines were a ball of fire, and even five centuries later, the one brings the other to life.) For "political science" is a broad topic. There are parallel ideas in the ancient civilizations of India and China. There are similar instincts, about the conduct of worldly affairs. The Chinese traditions, both Confucian and Taoist, which we have partly discerned through plausible translations, seem especially valuable in presenting the ethical requirements of a good statesman, that are the groundwork for his skills. Serenity and sobriety are in them; but especially in the more practical Confucian tradition, also a propensity to droll humour that reinforces sanity at all levels, and makes humility possible. The good statesman does not call attention to himself. Like any craftsman, his own attention is directed to his materials. He makes things happen, that ought to happen, in the most economical way -- with the fewest and least obtrusive interventions. He would rather it appeared things happened of themselves. He is of his nature intensely conservative; his ideal would be to change nothing at all. For there is an immortal order of things, a "rule of heaven," or in our Western idiom, "of laws not of men." And while he will attach his skills to his office, they truly reside within the statesman himself: that mysterious faculty of leadership, which commands the loyalties of lesser men, and almost wordlessly shows them the way, by the "charisma" of example. This, to me, has been the most puzzling thing, as I have looked at genuine "leaders" in several walks of life. The most impressive were not famous, and did not seek fame. They had the habit of taking on responsibilities, but not the habit of seeking praise. They were recognized, instinctively, in their own circle -- a team, with its natural "captain." Yet often as not, this captain was awkward with a crowd. I am trying to get at a quality of "charisma" that is almost the opposite of the demagogue quality. For the crowd worships straw men, until they fail and the crowd sets fire to them. It is very rare that we get a Churchill: a man who was extremely impressive both close up, and far away. There are anyway, fortunately, few occasions when they are needed. Too, he was "an exception to prove the rule" -- a man larger than his office, because endowed with some self-knowledge, who from his first public statement as prime minister promised the very opposite of magic. I differ from most of my colleagues in viewing today's fourth "G" summit in 20 months not as an effort in international diplomacy, but as an unnecessary public farce, in which "leaders" with the emotional development of small children strike ludicrous poses, while parading their ability to rake countless billions into "showcase" bottomless pits. Our own Stephen Harper probably comes closest, among the current rogues of G20, to the Confucian ideal, but he doesn't come very close. I miss George W. Bush, because he came closer: a decent man, who cared for his people more than he cared for himself, and who tried to be competent. I have some passing respect for Angela Merkel, arguably doing her best with the bad job of Germany. But again: this respect amounts only to an acknowledgement that the leader of a government is not babbling insane. For, even among the democratically elected Western leaders, there are too many obvious head cases: Obama, Sarkozy, and Berlusconi being the three most acutely in need of psychotherapy, instead of political power. And that is before we consider the psychotics who rule states like Russia and China. In a more perfect world, these "world leaders" would be rushed from the airport, not to the Metro Convention Centre -- with police outriders and sirens blaring -- but rather to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on Queen Street (the closest thing we still have to an old-fashioned "Ontario Hospital"). That "they are the world" is a measure of the permanent imperfection in human affairs. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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