SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

J. W. M. THOMPSON

It's probably too much to expect that people in this country will ever properly understand the

American political system. Misapprehensions abound. Out of the bemusing political events of recent days, for example, several substantial fallacies concerning the American presidency have emerged with the status of some kind of revealed truth. They are worth itemising. Thus, almost everyone seems to regard President Johnson's decision not to stand again as historically unexpected: incumbent presidents, it is supposed, almost always fight again and win. They don't: in the past fifty years there have been nine presidents; two died in office, three renounced another term, and four ran again, two of them unsuccessfully. In short, in half a century only two presidents (Roosevelt and Eisenhower) have been re-elected.

Again, the Democratic party is commonly spoken of as the normal 'governing party.' But Whereas we've had the Conservatives in power (alone, or dominating a coalition) for thirty- seven of the past fifty years, the Democrats have had the presidency for only thirty; in terms of elections the Democrats have won seven and the Republicans five, with 1968 pos- sibly reducing the gap to one; and even this much Democratic supremacy is due to the Roosevelt phenomenon (thirteen years of un- interrupted power and four election victories) which cannot constitutionally recur. Of the three Democratic victories out of five elec- tions since FOR, two have been virtual dead- heats, leaving Johnson's 1964 landslide the only decisive Democratic win in twenty-three years since Roosevelt. And since 1960 they have lost the anomalous support of the once solid south.

Furthermore, the Republicans are assumed to be fatally bad at picking candidates. But are they? Eisenhower was plainly the right choice in 1952 and 1956 (he did win, after all), and Dewey and Nixon were probably the best available. Only in 1964, with Goldwater, did they boob. But one boob in the post-FOR era isn't too bad: it's as good, at least, as the Democrats' record, for they clearly boobed

(electorally) in re-nominating Stevenson in 1956. A final oddity (but this is only a guess): the one place with a permanent majority of Democratic sympathisers is Britain—and this too, I suspect, is a lingering fragment of the Roosevelt phenomenon.

Precedence

In this country our domestic political fallacies are as often as not encouraged from above. Hence the joke, produced yet again after the latest Cabinet reshuffle, of the official 'order of seniority' allotted to Cabinet ministers. This is an essentially meaningless hierarchical exercise denoting neither the line of succession nor the degree of influence wielded. The official order runs 1 Wilson; 2 Stewart; 3 Jenkins; 4 Lord Gardiner; 5 Crossman; 6 Mrs Castle; and so on to the lower depths. A candid and accurate order of influence would run more like this: 1 Jenkins; 2 Wilson and Crossman (tied); 4 Healey; 5 Mrs Castle and Crosland (tied); 7 Stewart; then would follow a ruck of also-rans, unenumerated; and finally a little crowd (among them, I'm afraid, Lord Gardiner, No 4 in the official listings) who might be designated: 'The above failed to come under starter's orders.'

The onlie begetter

I see that Mr Geoffrey Tucker, the Tory party's new publicity chief, has been credited in some reports with that vintage electioneer- ing slogan, 'Life's better under the Conserva- tives: don't let Labour ruin it.' The truth is that Mr Quintin Hogg thought this up when he was chairman of the party. Advertising men seem to be increasingly important in politics, so one must preserve evidence that there is still a place for politicians, too.

Change

At Easter one tends to see more clearly the truth of a remark once made by Professor Brogan—that the Englishman likes the Church of England to be there for him to stay away from. At such times I sometimes wonder just how long the c of F. will be 'there' in this sense. The idea of 'establishment' no longer looks immutable, the parish system is questioned, new kinds of ministry are talked of, and ecumenism must bring many changes. Future generations are not likely to have the opportunity to stay away from the Church of England in quite its present form. I don't see why Anglicans should find this _depressing: even disestablishment would seem to many a rejuvenating severance of bonds that have become largely ceremonial. As to 'reunion,' all that is uncomfortable there is a lurking deference to 'efficiency' which affects much that is written on the subject, as if the churches were so many competing businesses ripe for rationalisation. We haven't yet heard bishops talking of 'economies of scale' but that may come. The latest proposals for Anglican-Methodist union have yielded a hint of this. I would like to see clerics eschewing worldly concepts like productivity and efficient use of resources. So far as the Methodists are concerned, it's a natural marriage, of course, but perhaps it won't be wholly a gain. I used to know a northern community where Metho- dists (known as Wesleyans) were numerous. `Chapel' people were famous for being respect- able; they did not smoke, drink, gamble, swear, or go to theatres; they were supposed to vote Liberal. By their differentness in these inessen- tial matters they added something distinctive to life in general. DiVersity, however, is in re- • treat on -all fronts today. The times favour only the monolithic institution and the big bat- talions.

The Goodman doctrine

Lord Goodman, whose passionate lament over the erosions of individual liberty under modern governments appears elsewhere in this issue, is something of a polymath in public life, but is perhaps best known for being chairman of the Arts Council and Mr Wilson's solicitor. I wonder whether, in the second of these capacities, he ever permits his conversations with the Prime Minister to stray from personal legal matters to the public issues (notably the `pure self-indulgence of unrestricted legisla- tion') of which he writes; and if so what kind of response he gets—although I can guess: `To be perfectly frank, I agree with you, but . . .' The trouble is that practically every politician of every party would reply in more or less similar terms: freedom is good, restric- tions are bad, but the particular restrictions I intend to introduce are inescapable in the public interest. And so we go on constructing what the Duke of Edinburgh recently called one of the most regimented societies in the world.

Mr George Brown has been reminding us of his admiration for Palmerston. He at least ought to remember his hero's maxim that 'we cannot go on legislating for ever,' and his be-

lief that pretty well everything necessary in the way of new laws had already been achieved a

century ago. Even granting that that quaint

notion has long since been swept away in the cataract, I can't help wondering how a political

party would fare if it undertook, short of War

or other disaster, to impose no new restraints whatsoever on freedom if elected to office. One

has only to make the suggestion to realise that it sounds flippant or unrealistic. Ought it to do so?

Black books

Mr Ray Gunter's departure from the Ministry of Labour won't be mourned among pub- lishers, who for many weary months now have been locked in laborious and barren negotia- tions with him. Since it has come to nothing so far, a shake-up at the top can hardly make the situation worse. The publishers' case is that it is anomalous and inequitable that they should be exposed to the full rigours of selec- tive employment tax when they are in fact manufacturers (and exporting manufacturers at that). They began to protest soon after Mr Callaghan had introduced his beloved tax; Mr Callaghan, however, had had the sense to see that someone else (the Minister of Labour, in fact) had the thankless job of removing unfairnesses from the star classifications, so a group of MPS, on behalf of the publishers, put the arguments to Mr Gunter. He 'declared his sympathy' and asked for more facts. Much statistical information was with difficulty ex- tracted from this notoriously individualistic trade, and duly submitted. Nothing happened; when last sighted, Mr Gunter was still de- claring his sympathy and the publishers were still paying out. After the Budget increase in SET, their anguish rose to new heights. The incensing detail for the publishers is that they've just notched up their highest export figures ever—£60 millions, double the figure of seven years ago. They think they ought to be allowed to rank as exporters after that. Now the bail is in Mrs Castle's court.