A Most Uncomfortable Parallel What Clement Attlee can teach the Right about Barack Obama

National Review ^ | January 13, 2010 | Andrew Stuttaford

[C19fan]

Let’s just agree that if you are looking for someone with whom to compare Barack Obama, the mid-20th-century British prime minister Clement Attlee does not come immediately to mind. Some might opt for FDR, some the Messiah, others the Antichrist or, harsher still, Jimmy Carter. Attlee? Not so much.

To start with, there’s the whole charisma thing. Attlee was the Labour leader who humiliated Winston Churchill in Britain’s 1945 election, but that victory (one of the most sweeping in British history) was more dramatic than the victor. No Obama, the new prime minister was shy, understated, and physically unprepossessing. Balding, sober-suited, and with an unshakeable aura of bourgeois respectability, Attlee resembled a senior bureaucrat, a provincial bank manager, or one of the more upscale varieties of traditional English murderer. If you want an adjective, “dull” will do nicely. As the jibe went, an empty taxi drew up, and out stepped Attlee. His speeches were dreary, largely unmemorable, and marked mainly by a reluctance to deploy the personal pronoun: Not for Attlee the “I”s and “me”s of Obama’s perorations. Clem was a modest man, but then, said some, he had much to be modest about.

[C19fan]

Attlee fundamentially changed Britain with his overwhelming electoral victory in 1945. He basically was a one term Prime Minister because Labour did get a thumping in 1950 election losing 78 seats and the Churchill would return to power in 1951. But except for a lifting of rationing and privisation of some industries Churchill and the Tories could not touch the Welfare State set up by Attlee. Zero, Pelosi and Reid have the same mentality. Use their overwhelming majority to fundamentally alter the balance of power towards Washington even if it costs them in 2010. As history has shown it is next to impossible to eliminate even trivial gov't programs.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

And once national health care is set up, all future political debate then shifts toward “fixing” the system, making it work and making it cover more and more people. As a consequence, national defense expenditures will drop precipitously from their already-low levels,, the US will become a third-world “power,” and and India will dominate the global stage. The US will pass just the way Europe and UK are passing from the scene.

[Captain Kirk]

As a consequence, national defense expenditures will drop precipitously from their already-low levels,,

Military spending should drop. We can't afford to continue policing the world, nor is it what the decentralistist founders wanted. I doubt that it will drop any time soon, however. The warfare and welfare states have tended to grow together in American history as they did under both FDR and LBJ. It is true that both military and welfare spending may eventually fall because that will be because of bankruptcy not because of a trade-off between one or the other.

[Winniesboy]

The only part of the portrait of Attlee in the article with which I’d disagree is what is said about his attitude to the Cold War. I’m unaware of evidence that, from the outset, he failed to back Ernest Bevin’s hard line, including an early commitment to a British independent nuclear deterrent.

[DM1]

same thing happened here with a lot of FDR programs.

[Reeses]

Military spending should drop.

Obama agrees with you but I don't. The military plays a key role in the economy by being the first customer for cutting edge technology. Then the price drops and new wealth is created. We owe our exceptional wealth today to the military investments for WW II and the Cold War. Currently the military is getting into robotics and biofuels. Although expensive now, robots will eventually lead to leaps in "worker" productivity and the return of manufacturing to America. Breakthroughs in biofuels, such as growing large amounts of oil algae on the open oceans, will end our wealth transfer to the Middle East. Gutting the military now will destroy America's future.