, "America, and I trust Soviet Russia. . . must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe."
Churchill's condescension reflected an odd view: Britain could still be an independent power, retaining the role bestowed by an empire. He saw Britain as the intersection of three overlapping circles: the Anglo- American world, the Commonwealth, and Europe. That idea was barely plausible after World War II. Itmade no sense at all after the 1956 Suez Crisis, which showed that neither the Commonwealth...
's prime minister in 1979. Her reply: "Everything."
Eight years later, both before and after her re-election this past June, she outlined what she had accomplished, or hoped to, with a series of catch phrases. "People's capitalism." A "lame-duck economy. . . [turned]...bulldog economy." "Every earner an owner." "An England free of socialism."
Pundits lumped it all together: The "Thatcher Revolution."
Revolution is not a term to be used...
"Few ideas are correct ones, and what
are correct no one can ascertain; but with words we govern men."
So said Benjamin Disraeli, as Gertrude Hirnrnelfarb notes in Victorian Minds (Knopf, 1968), a collection of her essays on British men of ideas. British histori- ans also valued word power. Their island nation had seen much change under many leaders, now including 75 mon- archs, beginning with Ethelbert of Kent (560-616), and 72 prime ministers, starting with Robert Walpole (1721-42)....
Stephen Hess, in The Brookings Re- view (Summer 1987), 1775 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.
In 1888, Oxford law professor James Bryce, author of The American Commonwealth, accused American voters of accepting "mediocrity" in their presidential candidates. Powerful political organizations, he wrote, only supported candidates from large states since "the objective was win-ning, not governing." Today, "political parties are in decline," argues Hess, a...
relying increasingly on "enhanced bureaucratic structures," and "legal accountability mechanisms."
The Challenger exploded, Romzek and Dubnick argue, not because
such "mechanisms" failed, but because, for a technology-oriented agency
like NASA, they are inappropriate altogether.
Pulpit Power? "An Experimental Study of the Influence of Reli-gious Elites on Public Opinion" Bruce Mc- ~eownand James M. ~aison,in Political Com- munication and Persuasion (Vol....