Word: crossman
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...from regretting power relationships, Crossman exhilarated in them. Prime Ministerial government was an arena for day-to-day survival in a contest of high stakes. "In the American Cabinet, they're officials. In the British Cabinet, each one of us is a potential prime minister. We could be dismissed by the PM at any time. In that context, you become tremendously aware of power relations...
...Crossman occasionally lapses into the same mechanistic liberal-realism which afflicted Bagchot's account of the English Constitution. He would discuss politics exclusively in terms of the management and the exercise of power. He would congratulate the masses for their "bovine stupidity" and then ignore them. True, the party machine introduces a popular element, though still at one remove, into the operations of government. But as the dynamic of social change, the party remains autonomous of the public in formulating policy. "All the new ideas come from the rank and file who are always out of tune with the majority...
...coercion generate power. The mass of the public may prove resistant to change, but that inertia is the critical variable. The public provides the climate, if not the specific cues, in which the government sets policy. That climate determines how well the ministry party pulls together on crucial issues. Crossman's focus would distort the decision-making process: consensus is needed in the party, coercion in the nation. He underestimates the multiple centers of power which prevail in a pluralist democratic electorate...
...member of the Cabinet since 1964, Crossman has grown old comfortably with the party nexus of Labour infighting. In the party, not in Parliament or on the hustings, he established his political prominence-"climbing up the scale of preferment" since 1957. He runs in a wonderfully safe district, which "would elect the backend of a jackass" if it wore the Labour label. "It's a very humbling thought," added Crossman. "They're not voting for me, they're voting for the machine. That is what left wing politics is all about...
...Crossman's evaluation of power politics reflects his own successful career. "Of course, you need luck to make it. If Gaitskell hadn't died. I would be very embittered about the system. I'd have spent my life being a Left wing critic...