by two qualities …
the one touch of genius he had
candour, decency

The one touch of genius he had was that of a peacemaker among Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Poles, bristling with national pride and driven by ambition. It may be, in fact, that such immortality as Eisenhower achieves will be guaranteed by two qualities that do not usually, in a worldly world, guarantee a man much more than the affection of his friends: by the force of them, Eisenhower was able to make trusting friends of about 250 million people fighting for their lives. They are candour and decency.

From the Letter to America titled simply, Eisenhower April 3, 1969. by Alistair Cooke as reprinted in the book, America observed : the newspaper years of Alistair Cooke, Penguin Books, London, 1989.

It was Cooke’s obituary of D. D. Eisenhower.

As Barbara Holland writes in the delightful, Hail to the Chiefs ( Berkley Books, New York, 2004):

One of the coziest things about Ike was that he never worried much. When people handed him worrying papers to read, he just smiled and handed them right back. He didn’t even worry about Senator McCarthy. He pretended there wasn’t any Senator McCarthy. He just blinked and got in his helicopter and went out to Burning Tree to play a Few holes before dinner. He figured it he paid no attention McCarthy would just go a way, and presently the Senate got fed up and censured the gentleman from Wisconsin and he did go away, sputtering and fumbling with his lists and still needing a shave, so Ike was right not to worry.

Candor ( Mr. Cooke used Candour).

Decency.

Right not to worry.

I like Ike.

Boy Howdy, do I miss him.

no more gimmicks, lies
self-serving self-obsession …
elected to serve!

From the opinion piece, The arrogant, reckless Tory government left behind a mountain of mess. In one week, we’ve begun to clear it by newly elected Brit PM Keir Starmer where Mr. Starmer writes, “Now is the time for politics as public service.

A government committed not to its self-preservation but to uniting the country in the shared mission of national renewal.

The start of the road back to restoring people’s hope and faith that politics can be a force for good.

No more gimmicks, lies and self-serving self-obsession – this government knows we have a duty to the people we are elected to serve.”

In the book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign (Crown, New YorK, 2017) Jonathan Allen writes, “Interestingly, both Bill and Hillary were paying attention to British politics. In 2015, when conservatives thrashed the liberal Labour Party, Hillary confided in aides that former prime minister Tony Blair had predicted to her that the left would lose if it ran a “base” election. She appeared to worry about being drawn too far to the left, rather than seeing the conservative takeover as an affirmation of nationalistic populism. Bill believed the push for Brexit—and its eventual approval by voters— showed a strong contempt for existing power structures that reflected the mood of the American electorate. You guys are underestimating the significance of Brexit, he told Brooklyn and his own advisers over and over.”

Maybe once again, our Brit cousins are pointed a path.

be drifting towards
catastrophe, everybody …
wishes to stop it

In a House of Commons debate over the news from the Spanish Civil War titled, The Situation at Bilbao on April 14, 1937, The Hon. Winston Churchill, said:

We seem to be moving, drifting, steadily against our will, against the will of every race and every people and every class, towards some hideous catastrophe.

Everybody wishes to stop it, but they do not know how.

Worry has been defined by some nerve specialists as “a spasm of the imagination.”

The mind, it is said, seizes hold of something and simply cannot let it go.

Reason, argument, threats are useless.

The grip becomes all the more convulsive.

But if you could introduce some new theme, in this case the practical effect of a common purpose and of co-operation for a common end, if you could introduce that, then indeed it might be that these clenched fists would relax into open hands of generous co-operation, that the reign of peace and freedom might come, and that science, instead of being a shameful prisoner in the galleys of slaughter, might pour her wealth abounding into the cottage homes of every land.

Everybody wishes to stop it, but they do not know how.

Reason, argument, threats are useless.

The grip … becomes all the more convulsive.

This was 2 years before the start of World War 2 for Great Britain.

4 years before the United States would get involved.

And 8 years until the war in Europe would be over.

We seem to be moving, drifting, steadily against our will, against the will of every race and every people and every class, towards some hideous catastrophe.

had the ultimate
effect of saving the Crown
… and much else besides

These engrained habits of toleration and respect for law sank deep into the English mind during the hundred years that followed the Revolution, and had their effect when the stresses of a new era began—with the democratic movement, the French Revolution and the social problems of the great industrial change.

The habit of respecting constitutional rights acted as some check on the violence of the anti-Jacobin reaction, and the same habit of mind carried the Radical and working-class movements into legal and parliamentary channels.

The victims of the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the nineteenth century sought a remedy for their ills by demanding the franchise and Parliamentary Reform instead of general overturn; this happy choice was due in part to our national character but largely also to our national institutions, in which the oppressed saw a way of escape.

The English Revolution had the ultimate effect of saving the Crown and much else besides.

The closing conclusion from the book, The English Revolution, 1688-1689 by G. M. Trevelyan, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1938).

The very first sentence says, “Why do historians regard the Revolution of 1688 as important? And did it deserve the title of “glorious” which was long its distinctive epithet? “The Sensible Revolution” would perhaps have been a more appropriate title and certainly would have distinguished it more clearly as among other revolutions.“

Sensible Revolutution?

Great Britain votes on Thursday.

Not sure about sensible as why in the world would they select the 4th of July for a game changing election?

That date has worked so well for them in the past?