The Best? --Notes on Mussolini

I've been meditating more on that little post I did yesterday about Manmohan Sing as "the best" in political leadership. It's a silly concept, of course, without any context as to what "the best" might be--Hitler, after all, was probably "the best" at what he did (at least from 1933 to 1941), but who would want that prize?

But I've been thinking in particular of two leaders whom I do not really intend to link, except that I happen to have been reading about them both. One is Benito Mussolini, as represented in RJB Bosworth's dazzling Mussolini's Italy--dazzling not merely for the depth of its scholaship but for the breadth of its moral vision. Bosworth is just so good not merely at describing what Italians did in the Mussolini era, but precisely how their conduct amounted to a betrayal of their nation and their own best selves (see also link) (Bosworth also serves as a splendid companion read--this was my immediate purpose--to accompany Elsa Morante's History: A Novel).

Bosworth understands Mussolini as a seriously awful personal, but he won't let us kid ourselves about him: Mussolini did not just parachute in from the Alpha Quadrant--he happened because the Italians let him happen. Indeed, the lesson I draw (my formulation, not Bosworth's) is that Mussolini was a superb tactician in the short term, ahis best in the social fluidity which followed World War I, during which he came to power. After that, he stayed because nobody wanted bad enough to get rid of him--until 1943 when those around him changed their minds and he fell over like an empty suit. In the interim, he survived not because he was uniquely awful, nor because the Italians were uniquely awful: rather, he survived by appealing to what is perhaps worst in the Italians: their long tradition of what Ed Banfield called "amoral familialism" or what Bosworth calls "raccomandazione"--government by crony, by "I have a friend who has a friend," by "we don't want nobody sent." Every country has it, of course, but it seems particularly strong on the peninsula, and one cannot help but speculate that it goes all the way back to the system of clientism that flourished in Ancient Rome.

Aside from that, Mussolini had nothing--no grand vision for instance, for which thank heavens: Hitler had a grand vision and look where it got us all. But how much better it might have been had the Italians found a leader who could have teased out their better selves, instead of their worse.

I've got some other thoughts on another leader, which I will leave for sa separate post.