One of my favorite jokes goes this way: In Heaven, the Administration is German, the police force is English; and the French cook. In Hell, the Administration is French, the police force is German, and the English cook. That is a good way of reminding one that different nations have different talents.
From the First Continental Congress up to the current anti-war movement, Americans have always shown a genius for self-organizing. But when it comes to elegantly acerbic political wit, the English are still the masters of the language. Consider this traditional story. An English lord was arguing with a journalist in a pub (where else?). The lord let this slip: "The only question, sir, is whether you will end up perishing by the pox, or on the gallows." After the briefest pause, he journalist replied: "that will depend on whether I embrace your lordship's mistress, or your lordship's principles." There wasn't enough left of the good lord to bury in a spoon.
So allow me to introduce a few paragraphs from a recent Telegraph piece, by Charles Moore, on the impending resignation of Tony Blair. The target of the wit in this case is not Blair, but one Tom Watson, serving in the labor government.
'My pride in what our Government has achieved under your leadership is beyond expression," wrote Tom Watson, parliamentary under secretary at the Ministry of Defence, to the Prime Minister this week.
You or I might find words such as these quite flattering, but Tony Blair is a politician, so he will have seen at a glance that what his very, very junior minister meant was: "I want to kill you." Sure enough, by the second paragraph, Mr Watson had got to the point: "I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country."
Now that is just the rhetorical equivalent of putting the ball on the tee. Political rhetoric most often means the opposite of what it seems to be saying when the speaker is forced to look up to his audience. When a resigning official says he wants to spend more time with his family, what he means is: "I am being dragged kicking and screaming away from the only source of self-esteem I am ever likely to enjoy." Mr. Moore now takes a swing with the wood.
Mr Watson began his letter by explaining his qualifications, as he saw them, for writing it: "The Labour Party," he said, "has been my life since I was 15 years old."
Inspection of Who's Who confirms Mr Watson's sad story. He was born in 1967. Apart from being a fundraiser from 1988-89 for Save the Children, he appears not to have done anything that anyone outside politics would call a job.
With the sound of a swish and the tell-tale chit of club meeting ball, Mr. Watson's claim to person-hood is now sailing far down the fairway, toward the green. Now lets see what Mr. Moore does with his irons.
The key to Tony Blair's career has been that he always understood that people such as Mr Watson should, wherever possible, be ignored. So in the tragicomedy that is politics, it is fitting that such people are now pulling him down.
But in his struggle against the Tom Watsons, he has always been on the side of us, the voters. Although we mostly want rid of him now, we shall therefore miss him.
No political party should ever be anyone's life. Its value is only instrumental – that it can mobilise enough people, ideas, money and interests to run things that need running and get things done that need doing.
Of course in polemical rhetoric, unlike golf, the more you swing the club the higher the score. At any rate, the ball is in the cup at the end of this round.
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