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.

Roosevelt: Not Enough Like Mussolini

There seems to be a bit of blog buzz over the BBC documentary which rehashes the story of the coup plot against Franklin Roosevelt and in particular, the part that Prescott (“grandpa”) Bush may have played in it. I haven’t a lot to add except to marvel over how a story like this—which has, after all, been around for quite a while—takes on legs as if new.

But I will offer one addendum that maybe nobody else has picked up on yet. That is: the standard criticism of Roosevelt today is that he was given to all kinds of batty and ill-considered forms of market intervention like, in particular, the National Recovery Administration (which, so far as I know, nobody alive defends today). IOW, he should have been more like Ron Paul.

But even a cursory skim of the coup story will show that the coup plotters had a diametrically different agenda. Indeed, their complaint about Roosevelt was that he should have been more like Mussolini.

Now, if you are looking for batty and ill-considered interventionist schemes, I should think that Mussolini’s Italy is exactly the first place you would want to look (Hitler is a poor second: in execution, some of his schemes were actually efficient). So; the wingnut line of the 30s is just about 180 degrees out from the wingnut line of today.

Fn.: Whether Ron Paul is, in fact, in any way remotely like Ron Paul, is a question I leave for another day. I mention him only because any mention of "Ron Paul" gooses my blog hits.

Reference: A Google Blog Search for “BBC Roosevelt Prescott Bush Mussolini” at 9:05 pm pst tonight yielded 170 hits.