In the mid-1990s, when former US presidential candidate Bob Dole made a television commercial for Viagra, gravely recounting his bout with prostate cancer and the difficulty of post-operative complications like erectile dysfunction, many Americans were nonplussed. Not only did the ad reveal a warmer, more avuncular man than the one who had shown up for the campaign – so much so that Pepsi subsequently persuaded Dole to promote their product with a parody of the Viagra spot – but the spectacle of a trusted senator working as a corporate shill showed how vulnerable public figures could become when they stepped out of the spotlight. (Dole would also appear in commercials for Visa and Dunkin’ Donuts.)
The post-political careers of some British politicians are equally revealing. After a painful defeat in the 1992 UK general election, thanks largely to the malevolence of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids, Neil Kinnock served with some distinction as a European Commissioner, eventually rising to become Vice-President of the Commission before his retirement in 2004. By contrast, John Major, the self-effacing Conservative who succeeded Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, initially seemed to have left public life altogether to indulge a longstanding love of cricket, as president of Surrey County Cricket Club and as a committee member of the MCC. But the past kept dragging him back into the news, particularly the disclosure of a four-year extramarital affair with a former political colleague. Like many other retired politicians, Major also worked as a political consultant and gave well-paid lectures to supplement his income.
During the last month the vicissitudes of political fame have been apparent on both sides of the pond. At the recent Republican convention, neither of the Bush presidents was in attendance, nor former vice- president Dick Cheney, former secretary of state Colin Powell, nor former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. By contrast former president Bill Clinton’s long, effective speech at the Democratic Convention upstaged even President Obama and showed how little the impeachment saga had dented Clinton’s appeal to the wider American public.
In stark contrast to Clinton’s charismatic showing, former British prime minister Gordon Brown, recently appointed as UN special envoy for global education, was at the UN General Assembly last week to discuss a project to get more children through school. Faced with a near total lack of interest – a single reporter turned up for the press conference –Brown cancelled his appearance.
The difference, in tone and substance, with the post-political roadshow of Brown’s former colleague, and nemesis, is very instructive. In a sharply critical New Republic article on Tony Blair’s ‘buckraking’ the political journalist Ken Silverstein writes about Blair’s role as a “Western cheerleader” for corrupt and anti-democratic leaders in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. (Blair has called the notorious President Nursultan Nazarbayev a man with “the toughness necessary to take the decisions to put the country on the right path.” He also found Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev to possess a “very positive and exciting vision for the future of the country.”) Citing a Financial Times estimate that in 2011 Blair earned as much as $30 million from speeches and corporate and political consulting, Silverstein writes: “Blair’s ambition to create a more democratic world may have shrunk, but his bank account has certainly grown.”
These wildly divergent sequels to political lives suggest the deep divisions in modern political culture. Men like Kinnock and Brown, whatever their failings, belong to a long tradition of public service that played an important role in twentieth century democracies. Dole, Blair and Clinton (to a much larger extent than his admirers will readily admit) appear far more willing to trade in the engagement of political life for the consolations, and rewards, of mere celebrity.
The Caribbean has no shortage of underused elder statesmen, men and women who could tackle – often in a bipartisan manner that eluded them while in office – large questions like education or healthcare reform. There is no part of the West Indies that could not profit from seasoned politicians attending thoughtfully to the sorts of challenges the European Commission and United Nations leave to their senior diplomats. Sadly, however, too many of our retired public servants and politicians end their lives as marginal figures, neither able to pocket the corporate and political largesse available to better known leaders elsewhere, nor to contribute meaningfully to the countries they have led, or tried to lead.
