Word: politicians
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Frederick the Great of Prussia, who called himself "the first servant of the state," was as much a tyrant as any monarch of the 18th century, but he liked to say of himself that he was "philosopher by instinct and politician by duty." He was also a patron of the arts. He played the flute to the accompaniment of one of Johann Sebastian Bach's sons; he wrote indifferent poetry under the tutelage of his sometime friend Voltaire; he was an avid collector of paintings and sculpture. In affairs of state, he was Prussian to the bone...
...self-conscious intellectual he is not oblivious to others. He is too close in spirit to Henry Adams not to realize the dilemma of the intellectual in politics. Like Adams he comes of aristocratic American stock, is attuned to public service, and yet in a nation where "politician" is still a dirty word, is fit only for skepticism and irony...
Nevertheless, Professor Hughes has decided to suspend the intellectual dilemmas and run. His compound role--Hughes the intellectual, Hughes the politician, Hughes the man of issues, Hughes the image, Hughes the reformer, and Hughes the peace advocate--is, to be sure, fraught with ambiguities. The voters may not mind the ambiguities, but some Harvard people do, and one often hears them ask, "Why is he doing...
Only one man has even been able to appeal to all these groups and find support almost everywhere in the state--Orvil Faubus. Even a sharp critic admits that he is "the most successful politician who has ever come out of the state of Arkansas"; and with his retirement, announced two weeks ago, a real power vacuum has been created...
...been so all along (the author implies), then armed with this concept he is Nixon reformed, Nixon respectable, Nixon virtuous, Nixon--very nearly--victorious. But he is not really anything of the kind. Still the professional politician of the Douglas days, he speaks to fund-raising dinners, ward banquets, and National Committee Chairmen, but not to the people. Eisenhower (elevated above the people), missions to Venezula and Russia, have brought him no closer to them...