GOP candidates can’t compare to Churchill
Not a few Republicans in Congress have come down with something, including those suffering from WSC Syndrome.
Just what is WSC Syndrome and what are the symptoms?
First, the symptoms. Those with the disorder see themselves as great heroes; actually more than great; they see themselves as heroic on a truly historic scale.
They see themselves as tough and resilient; excessively tough and excessively resilient, in fact, in the face of daunting foes who would rule the world. While others are blind to the danger, they see it clearly; this ability to penetrate the dark corridors of time is one of their more remarkable characteristics. In future years, they are sure, people will hail their prescience. They made the world safe for democracy, after all. Or so their symptoms tell them.
As for the syndrome itself, it’s named for Winston Spencer Churchill. Yes, these men and women of the Republican Party see themselves as following in the footsteps of Churchill, who only saved western civilization from the scourge of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1940s.
The great English prime minister, before he became prime minister, spent a decade in the political wilderness. Without much success, he spent most of that time trying to alert his countrymen to the dangers they faced from a ruthless enemy.
That’s how these Republicans think of themselves — as 21st-century Churchills warning their fellow Americans about the world-shaking dangers of Islamic fanaticism.
I first became aware of the penchant on the part of some Republicans to cast themselves in the role of Churchill back in 2006. It was the waning days of Rick Santorum’s bid for re-election to the Senate from Pennsylvania. His opponent, Robert Casey Jr., was way up in the polls, and it was clear Santorum was about to be crushed. (He, indeed, was crushed, by 17 points).
Maybe Santorum figured he had nothing to lose. Another factor, I’m sure, was Santorum’s desire to go on record about the threat posed by Islamic firebrands and the flabby, insufficient American response. (Remember, this was 2006, during the administration of George W. Bush.)
Sen. Santorum proceeded to unleash his inner Churchill. Like Churchill, he was a man in the political wilderness, on the verge of being cast aside by an unknowing, unheeding electorate. As a consequence, the senator was in full gallop. If my memory is correct, Santorum even invoked the phrase “the gathering storm” in connection with the Middle East.
The phrase just happens to be the title of Churchill’s post-war memoir about his lonely struggle to warn Brits about the Nazi menace.
Fast forward to 2012, and Santorum, now running for the Republican presidential nomination, was back at it, saying at one point that 2012 was much like 1940-41 “when America didn’t act against Hitler because Americans thought ‘he was a nice guy … not as bad as we think.'”
Santorum’s performance won the approval of the radio-TV crackpot Glenn Beck, who declared, “I think the guy is a Winston Churchill in many ways.”
Santorum was instrumental in kicking off a grand parade of GOP Churchill wannabes.
Such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who early last year received the Claremont Institute’s Winston Churchill Award (that the conservative Claremont Institute has a prize named after Churchill says plenty.)
On April Fool’s Day 2014, Cruz placed on his right bicep a fake tattoo — a tattoo of Churchill in his best bulldog pose.
On a more serious note, Cruz once likened President Obama to the man who in the late 1930s was Churchill’s chief domestic foil, prime minister Neville Chamberlain. Sen. Cruz compared the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran over that country’s nuclear ambitions to Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich over the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
In a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas revisited the Munich analogy, declaring the U.S. talks with Iran were no different than the policy of appeasement that discredited Chamberlain and led to the start of World War II.
Childhood and college friends recalled that Cotton, the author of the recent Senate Republican letter to the hardliners in Iran that raised such a ruckus, was a great admirer of Churchill.
Heck, as a boy I was a great Churchill fan. I still am. Churchill was universally esteemed. John F. Kennedy so admired Churchill that he made the former prime minister an honorary American citizen in 1963, famously observing that Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle” during the war.
The fall back position of western statesmen and U.S. politicians in the post-war period was that at all cost Munich must not be repeated in the struggle with the Soviet Union. We must remain strong and resolute, the lesson went, a pretty good guidepost even today.
But as analogies go, it only goes so far. Applied once too often, it led the U.S. into the jaws of the Vietnam War.
It’s an even more dubious analogy now. In their time, both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were major world powers. Iran and Syria are pygmy states, and ISIS and Al-Qaeda, for all their awful ferocity, aren’t even states.
For these reasons, as well as for its general creepiness, the Republican attempt to hijack Churchill’s staunchly anti-Munich reputation for their own uses is both disconcerting and extremely dangerous.
Besides, Republicans overlook two Churchill observations that could, with profit, be taken to heart. One is, “Talk, talk is better than war, war.” The other is, “We arm to parley.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books -Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.