[x]

At 24, anything is possible. At that age, we are all convinced that great changes in politics are possible, desirable, and not all that hard to achieve. Life teaches us otherwise. Major changes come about once in a generation. Persuasion, argument, education, organization and propaganda all prepare the ground for possible changes, but it's usually some crisis that triggers and forces change. In the absence of such a crisis people's natural small c conservatism makes them likely to resist changes based merely on ideological arguments. And even the desirable, long-awaited changes unleashed in times of crisis bring less worthy and less well-thought-out changes in their wake.

The comparison of the politician and the statesman is worth developing. But even the statesman knows that if he is not elected or reelected he can achieve nothing. And a statesman is not the same thing as an ideological warrior. The statesman has to have an idea of the country as a whole beyond this or that ideology.

It would be interesting to know just who the author's ideal statesmen are. We tend to take someone like Churchill as a model statesman because of his principled stand against Hitler. But that involves foreign policy. We forget that in his domestic political battles Churchill was ineffective when he stood firm on principle or ideology, and was not firm and uncompromising when he was effective. In 1945 Churchill stood firm on the issue of freedom versus socialism and lost by a landslide. When he came back to power, he compromised, fudged or finessed every ideological conflict. A half century earlier, at the beginning of his ministerial career, Churchill the Liberal did indeed stand on principle and for a time succeed, but they were the wrong principles.

[Saundra Duffy]

I think the author is talking about someone like DONALD RUMSFELD. I get a kick out of Rummie when he gets pissed!