Browsing Footprints in Time, the memoirs of Winston Churchill’s longtime private secretary, John Colville, I found a tale from eighty years ago with a lesson for American public life today.
The idiosyncrasies of the British government being what they were in 1945, Colville, who had served Churchill as a private secretary throughout the Second World War, became one of Clement Attlee’s private secretaries when the Labor Party leader displaced Churchill as prime minister in July 1945 and inherited Churchill’s civil service staff at 10 Downing Street. Churchill and Attlee had been both partisan rivals and colleagues in the war-winning coalition government; there was respect, and perhaps even affection, between them despite the bitterness of the 1945 election campaign.
That led to the story in question, which Colville tells with understated panache:
I…had a curious start as one of Mr. Attlee’s private secretaries. Churchill tried to make political capital out of an ill-judged letter written by Professor Harold Laski [a leading Socialist intellectual] during the recent Election Campaign. He and Attlee exchanged angry letters on the subject for publication. It became my duty to go to Claridge’s, where Churchill had temporarily established his headquarters, and help him draft a Joshua-like blast of the trumpet to Attlee. I delivered it to Attlee and helped him draft a withering reply. This enjoyable and totally ineffective exercise lasted several days. Each knew that I was assisting the other.
It is unimaginable that anything like that could happen in the overheated American politics of the moment, characterized as they are by a vindictiveness that might have given Inspector Javert pause. We are the poorer for it. And while certain circles today would deride Churchill and Attlee as members of the British “elite,” it was an elite in which the duty of public service was deeply ingrained and for whom the country’s good transcended partisanship in an emergency.
Thus, Attlee, leader of the parliamentary opposition, played a key role in bringing Churchill to power in the “darkest hour” of May 1940, and Churchill not only made his rival a member of his small War Cabinet, but eventually Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the House of Commons. This was statesmanship of the highest order, and we could use some of it today.
A few days after my re-engagement with the Colville memoirs, I found myself in Simi Valley, California, where I was given a thorough tour of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. The facility’s architecture and landscaping beautifully complement the surrounding terrain; the museum does a fine job of explaining a life and a presidency of great consequence for the nation and the world; “the “Gipper’s Bar and Bistro” serves a terrific tuna melt sandwich with excellent fries.
Those whose theological lodestar is St. Augustine will likely cringe at the first clause of the inscription at the simple gravesite where Ronald and Nancy Reagan are buried — “I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph, and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” Taken as a whole, however, that Reaganesque faith in the possibility of human decency helps explain the text from the Gipper’s speech to the 1992 Republican National Convention, which closes the museum tour:
Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts.
The 47th president should learn from this. At a few moments in his inaugural address, Mr. Trump seemed to have done so. But actions, as always, speak louder than words, and the president’s petulant decision to deny further federal security protection to his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and his former national security adviser, John Bolton — both of whom are under a fatwah sentence of death from the vicious mullahs now running Iran — would have appalled Churchill, Attlee, and Reagan.
Whatever making America great again may mean, it cannot mean meanness of this sort.
History measures the enduring greatness of public figures in many ways; nobility of spirit married to decency of comportment in both victory and defeat is surely one of them. Thus I respectfully suggest that President Trump place on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office a plaque with the following text, which Churchill inscribed as the “Moral of the Work” in each of the six volumes of his history, The Second World War, which helped him win the Nobel Prize for Literature:
In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Goodwill.
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“With malice toward none. With charity for all.” These immortal words were spoken by a man who had to dismember his enemies on the battlefield ruthlessly. ONLY GOD can enable a man to practice that sort of paradoxical treatment of his adversaries. We need to pray for Donald Trump and those who advise him.
I don’t actually agree about that need to dismember enemies in a war that could have been avoided or at least brought to an earlier, less bloody settlement. But yes, we should as Christians have charity towards all & malice towards none.
And we absolutely should pray for our leaders & those in authority.
My sense is that the premise of Mr. Weigel’s essay indicates he ignores the reality of the thorough corruption of the US political establishment, and at the same time I agree that Mike Pompeo and John Bolton should have US security protection.
The US political establishment and it’s federal government machinery need to be dismantled, and large parts of that machinery, particularly the “governors-and-turbochargers” of “the-war-without-end-regime-change-DOD-State-Department-CIA-political-industrial-complex” and their counterparts in the “political-intelligence-machine-who-turned-the-DOJ-and-FBI-against-faithful-US-citizens” need to be investigated and tried for criminal conduct. And that’s just mere justice…and nothing else.
Pompeo and Bolton deserve to have security, the same as was denied RFK and President Trump.
And Trump and his team should not treat Pompeo and Bolton the way Biden and his DOJ-FBI-USSS-gestapo treated Trump and RFK. Because to do so is vindictive.
Political leaders have differing skills, gifts, & charisms just as we all do.
I greatly admired Ronald Reagan & still miss him but God may send us the kind of leaders that the times we live in call for. Even unlikely leaders like Donald Trump. He’s accomplished more good in the last couple weeks than some presidents accomplish in 4 years. God bless him for that.
Agree
He has — our God — sent a leader for the times we live in, President Donald Trump. He arrived prepared, with a plan and a team and the mandate to do a gargantuan job. The bleating, whining, and vituperation from the far side provide ample evidence of his detrermination.
Chris: There is a limit to the never Trumper George Weigel, while pretending not to be one, can pretend to not be one.
I’m sure Pompeo and Bolton can each pay for their own protection if they want it.
We’re $36 trillion in debt.
I don’t know about that sir. If they are millionaires, they might be able to afford it.
But the principle at hand is that the Republic owes them the security because their lives have been threatened by Iranian assasins as retribution for lawful actions of the USA that they executed against Iran.
That debt of security is very big, a thousand times bigger than the cost in these 2 cases.
Just recall some of this debt/ financial woes is a result of both Trump, first term, COVID loss/recovery and the Biden administration.. No president has or will be given a level budget .
To attempt to make analogous some nasty back-and-forth letter writing between Atlee & Churchill with what Trump has been subjected to by the Swamp and all it’s minions for the last four years is laughable.
To laud A&C as “statesmen” in whom “the duty of public service was deeply ingrained and for whom the country’s good transcended partisanship” with the implication that Trump is none of the above is equally laughable.
In this article Weigel only succeeds is revealing his neocon loyalties (Bolton & Pompeo also being two prominent neocon card-carrying members). Recall that in standing 100% with his fellow neocons twenty years ago – and publicly AGAINST Pope John Paul II – Weigel vociferously promoted W Bush’s groundless immoral invasion of Iraq which only accomplished disastrous results: destruction of Iraq, countless dead, trillions of dollars wasted, etc.
The neocons hate Trump for not going to war here, there, and everywhere around the world. Their claim to being spreaders of democracy and nation builders is totally debunked by simply looking at what they did to Iraq and Afganistan alone!
The Swamp put Trump through hell for the last four years. Bolton’s reaction was to seek out every tv camera he could find to denounce Trump. Pompeo’s reaction was to laughably challenge Trump in the 2024 Election Primaries. Where did Pompeo get the money to do that? Hmmmm….! The neocons, of course.
These two guys have multi millions of dollars from their lifetimes of “public service” to now hire their own security. They both publicly took the side of those who tried to bankrupt, imprison, and defame Trump. I can think of thousands of more worthy causes for Weigel to submit articles on to CWR!
I get the feeling, yet again, that George Weigel is still wagging his finger at Trump. It was tiresome before, and it is tiresome now. I wish Weigel could restrain himself until Trump has finished his projects and the dust of history settles.
I don’t look to George Weigel for his political analysis. It baffles me why he warrants so much attention.
Agree.
Mr. Weigel seems to live in an alternate universe.
“Petulant decision”????? Really? Too many of Trumps former appointees decried him as a potential dictator, someone unfit for office, a Russian asset, or wrote nasty books about him off the back of their appointments and undermined his efforts to run the government. Then they continued to attack him after he was out of office. All of this unfounded hysterical action helped his deepest enemies to find broad political capital to engage in efforts to have him jailed. This has NEVER been done in the history of the country. What many reap now is the fruit of their partisanship and personal disloyalty.
I dont believe this effort by Trump is “payback” (although he would richly deserve to engage in that). The question is, in the case of FBI agents for example, how can you trust people to do such government jobs impartially who have already abused their govt position to engage in lawfare, bankrupting or jailing people. Is it necessary to lock up elderly and ill old ladies who strolled trough the Capital on J6? Since we routinely allow rapists and murders to walk away from prosecution, the obvious conclusion is that these minor offenses where prosecuted based on political motivation. Could Trump EVER have confidence in the honesty of such workers? Was it necessary to jail 1200 protestors from J6? Especially when virtually NO ONE was jailed following the much more deadly and violent George Floyd riots? An awful lot of us dont think so. It is this sort of thing which has given people a bad taste for those in govt office, high or low, who abused their power. It is not unlike the reality that the govt has NOT made the same visible effort to find those who vandalize churches but are more than glad to jail for YEARS those who stand across the street from an abortion clinic to pray. All laws can be abused if those administering them are corrupt or rabidly partisan, to the extent that any pretense to impartiality is gone. Ditto, its a bad look to stab you boss in the back, even once you are out of office. Its time for our government to kick out the trash.
It has been a little over eight years but Weigel is following up on his 2016 open letter advising everyone not to vote for Trump. Seems like never ending TDS. Trump has issued many dozens of great executive orders, but Weigel picks his removal of government protection from two people to complain about.
I was going to list eight significant pro-life orders Trump has issued in just two weeks, but anyone can find them on the internet.
As for dealing with opponents the way Churchill dealt with Attlee, Churchill was not dealing with someone who pushed for the murder of the unborn, was in favor of multiple genders, wanted coed school bathrooms, open borders to allow millions of illegals into the country and a multitude of other terrible issues.
Many of the opponents president Trump is dealing with should probably be in jail for what they have done.
Agree.
I remember a number of people including Robert George signed a “Never Trump ” letter published in a newspaper around 2016. I wonder how they feel now?
Some terrific comments above. Keep ’em coming!
As I recall Reagan was held in rather low regard by many of our European “betters” while in office. Conservative Republican politicians in particular appear to gain stature and regard only after they are out of office and out of power.
Absolutely on target. The neocons hate Trump because he isn’t one of them. It would be so salutary if everyone would resist commentary a few weeks until Trump’s “evil machinations” have borne a bit of fruit. No, he isn’t perfect. Those who are may condemn him, but those who are doing most of the excoriating are frightened because of the heavy guilt that weighs them down, and, were justice done, they would be treated as Donald and Melania Trump have been, and continue to be treated.
PS It seems unlikely that either Churchill or Atlee tried to destroy one another. Happily, the Media couldn’t possibly be as malicious as ours has been either.
“This was statesmanship of the highest order, and we could use some of it today.”
In can think of several reasons why this statement doesn’t apply in our present American context, but I’ll settle for two. Tulsi Gabbard and RFK,jr. Is Mr. Weigel deliberately tuning out, or just not paying attention?