Meet Neville Bush
Lynne Olson is the author of Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England . Today he has an op-ed in the Washington Post that discusses George W. Bush’s admiration of Winston Chruchill. The key paragraph: I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about Churchill while working on ...
Lynne Olson is the author of Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England. Today he has an op-ed in the Washington Post that discusses George W. Bush's admiration of Winston Chruchill. The key paragraph: I've spent a great deal of time thinking about Churchill while working on my book "Troublesome Young Men," a history of the small group of Conservative members of Parliament who defied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler, forced Chamberlain to resign in May 1940 and helped make Churchill his successor. I thought my audience would be largely limited to World War II buffs, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the president has been reading my book. He hasn't let me know what he thinks about it, but it's a safe bet that he's identifying with the book's portrayal of Churchill, not Chamberlain. But I think Bush's hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president's wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out -- but they're between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill.Read the rest of Olson's essay to see the comparisons. For someone who was not terribly familiar with Chamberlain's leadership style, the parallels are quite surprising. UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Slate, US Weekly editor Janice Min compares Bush to someone else entirely. ANOTHER UPDATE: Peter Baker has a front-pager in the Washington Post today that discusses Bush's frame of mind. Olsen's book is mentioned explicitly -- Olson's analogy is implicit but shot through the piece.
Lynne Olson is the author of Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England
I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about Churchill while working on my book “Troublesome Young Men,” a history of the small group of Conservative members of Parliament who defied British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Adolf Hitler, forced Chamberlain to resign in May 1940 and helped make Churchill his successor. I thought my audience would be largely limited to World War II buffs, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the president has been reading my book. He hasn’t let me know what he thinks about it, but it’s a safe bet that he’s identifying with the book’s portrayal of Churchill, not Chamberlain. But I think Bush’s hero would be bemused, to say the least, by the president’s wrapping himself in the Churchillian cloak. Indeed, the more you understand the historical record, the more the parallels leap out — but they’re between Bush and Chamberlain, not Bush and Churchill.
Read the rest of Olson’s essay to see the comparisons. For someone who was not terribly familiar with Chamberlain’s leadership style, the parallels are quite surprising. UPDATE: Meanwhile, in Slate, US Weekly editor Janice Min compares Bush to someone else entirely. ANOTHER UPDATE: Peter Baker has a front-pager in the Washington Post today that discusses Bush’s frame of mind. Olsen’s book is mentioned explicitly — Olson’s analogy is implicit but shot through the piece.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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