The other day an Italian asked me, flatteringly, what the world
makes of Silvio Berlusconi. He clearly wanted to hear that
foreigners see his country’s prime minister as a buffoon.
Instead I replied that despite Berlusconi’s notorious gaffes,
like his comparison of a German politician to a concentration camp
guard, or his claim that “Mussolini did not murder anyone,” the
Italian leader is obviously a formidable politician. The man has
risen to the head of his country’s government not once but twice,
the second time with a larger majority than anyone else in the
history of the republic. One may distrust him or oppose him on
ideological grounds, but no one can reasonably deny his skill. (To
say nothing of his business success. No one makes himself the
richest man in Europe by being a fool.)
As I spoke, the expectant smirk faded from my Italian friend’s
face, and when I was done he had no reply. We quickly moved on to
more congenial topics.
This exchange prompted me to think, of all things, about Martin
Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, which I watched recently on
DVD. In that movie, set in mid-19th-century Manhattan, Daniel
Day-Lewis plays (to the hilt) the leader of a Yankee gang at war
against the Irish Catholic immigrants “invading” his native land.
Though his hatred of the Irish is virtually uncompromising, he
respects no one more than the leader of the enemy, played by Liam
Neeson, whom he slaughters in the movie’s brutal opening scene.
Thereafter Day-Lewis keeps a picture of the dead foe on his
mantelpiece, pays tribute to him on the anniversary of his death,
and refers to him as the “last honorable man.”
Scorsese clearly intended his story as a national epic (“America
was born on the streets,” proclaimed the ads), and this combination
of enmity and admiration has been a fundamental of epic since
Achilles slew Hector. It’s only logical: the glory of victory
depends on the excellence of the vanquished.
America and Europe are a long way from those values today. We
don’t merely abhor our political enemies, we mock and belittle
them. This isn’t new — recall the caricatures of Lincoln as
“Honest Ape” — and it’s probably inherent in mass democracy, where
the aristocratic warrior code is as obsolete as hand-to-hand combat
is on the battlefield. Candidates and their consultants will
naturally do all they can to win, and if ridicule works, they’re
bound to use it.
But ridicule is a weapon that can backfire, if you believe your
own propaganda. Think how much mileage Ronald Reagan got from his
enemies’ conviction that he was, in Clark Clifford’s words, an
“amiable dunce.” A dozen years after the fall of the Soviet Union,
millions of self-styled intellectuals around the world still cling
desperately to this delusion, like crack addicts to their pipes.
George W. Bush is of course similarly blessed with the opposition’s
determination to underestimate him.
Left-wingers are especially prone to deriding the other side as
stupid, because so many of them hold jobs like teaching and
punditry, where thinking that you’re smarter than others is an
occupational hazard. But the Right is not immune to the temptations
of smugness. Though it’s hard to remember now, an awful lot of Bill
Clinton’s enemies continued to portray the 42nd president as no
more than a hick and callow bumbler long after the record suggested
otherwise.
So here’s a suggestion for partisans of all persuasions: hate
your enemies, if you must, but remember to give them their due.
It’s more dignified, and a lot more prudent.
