New Year--New Program

It's a new year, 2022,  and as I look outside, the first snowfall is in progress this Monday morning. They called off school and closed the government; this time, the precautions are likely to be justified. Even accounting for how nuts Washington gets with a dusting of snow, a likely 4-6 inches is major. It was warm right through the end of last year. Now I suppose it may not be.

Life was just starting to "normalize" (in quotes because it's hard to say what that means any more) when suddenly the pandemic got new energy. Everything was canceled and making plans was postponed. Staying inside means watching way too much tedious television. We start to watch some streaming series that someone has recommended and usually, it's fair and that means that after two episodes, we've had it.

More reading becomes a refuge. The new Churchill book by Geoffrey Wheatcroft provides a judicious corrective to the hagiography that developed especially in the U.S. The Andrew Roberts biography was good but mostly passed over the many low points, actually decades, of his life. Wheatcroft, in contrast, agrees that he shone during the five World War II years, even with many problematic acts. He was the man of the hour and deserved the acclaim. Most of the rest of his career before and after was far less successful. He did oppose appeasement and predicted the disasters of British foreign policy in the 1930's, but had little impact.

The rest were often disastrous, although one of his surprising defenders about Gallipoli was an officer who was in uniform there, Clement Attlee, who defeated Churchill in the 1945 election that showed that the British public knew that a different leader was needed in peacetime. 

Churchill was an unabashed imperialist, racist according to the standard outlook of the British upper classes, and tone-deaf to horrors like the killer London fog. His second stretch as Prime Minister in the early 1950's was undistinguished. 

It's when he is put up against the prewar Tory powers like Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, appeasers at best, that he comes off as a roaring success. Boothby and especially Beaverbrook became real war assets, but Attlee's cabinet--Bevan and Bevin, Morrison, and many others--were able to bring real change to the hidebound institutions of the U.K. Only a true right-wing revolutionary, Thatcher, could undo a great deal of the reform.

Churchill was always able to write--he admitted that he would make sure the world knew of his accomplishments during World War II because he would write the history, and he did just that.  In contrast to his World War II six-volume set, he  did better with his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. It is out of fashion today, largely because any work with that title offends too many and omits too much, but there's much good in it, told entertainingly.

Many of his quirks that seemed positive then--the huge cigars and the booze--seem less impressive today. He was far from a good parent--several of his children led sad, disastrous lives. 

Yet the oratory, which to me still works, and although it might not be effective today, was just what was needed then. He understood that there was no way to negotiate with Nazi Germany, especially from a position of weakness. He also realized early on that he would take advantage of his partially American parentage to build a good working relationship with FDR, who also grasped that despite their many differences, was the right man for the time.