Remember This

In the Allen Drury novel I skipped through the other day, the President ends up announcing the success of a major initiative to extend democracy to a small country while helping it merge with another country. Both of those countries are governed by greedy, duplicitous men, but one has weapons, so that's the one that we help. In a concluding scene, he is berated by his Secretary of State for lying, and for proclaiming as a success what is clearly a failure. The President listens, and then says, in effect, that the Secretary is right, but that it doesn't matter, because a) most of the country gets their awareness of the world from the major television networks; what they say happened is what happened, so far as they are concerned, and b) the overwhelming majority of people will forget this episode, just as they forget so many others, within a relatively brief period of time -- a couple of months, if that. Sustain the facade until then, he says, and I'll be home free. Grudgingly, the Secretary agrees that he is right.

Given Drury's style, he's trying to say that of course the readers of his books can't be snowed like that, nor can they be counted on to forget so quickly, and, who knows, he might be right. But in most cases, me included, two months is enough time to forget just about anything.

There's something to be said for institutional memory, and for remembering the events of the past -- not as much as certain people who seem to live for the opportunity to rehash events one more time would have it, but certainly an awareness of what has happened, what it meant, who was involved, is worthwhile. One of the most satisfying books I ever read was Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (a paperback version is available from Amazon), which described certain significant political decisions and the historical parallels and lessons upon which they were based -- sometimes accurately, sometimes not so much. Most of us -- again, including me -- aren't up to the megawatts of intellectual brainpower to be able to pull these historical analogies and reference up when we need them, but it is gratifying to know that there are people who do. Would that more of us (me) could emulate that.