life as prolifically as you seem to in the US. Robert Gates and Richard Clarke seem to me to be just two such public servants. In the case of Gates, judging from this article, I think it reflects very well on the discernment of your subtle President, Barak Obama, as, I expect, others of his key appointees will.
The only two outstanding figures in British, peace-time politics I could cite as being very much in this league, were the Welshmen, David Lloyd George, who eventually served as PM, and Aneurin Bevan, who somehow pushed through the National Health Service.
Lloyd George saved the country's bacon during WWI, after the way in which it was being conducted by the normal run of upper-class and upper middle-class politicians of the time had proved to be grossly, shamefully deficient. But he also laid the foundations of the welfare state (SOCIALISM!!! AARGHH!!!), in the development of which Aneurin Bevan was to play such as a heroic part, after WWII.
Their role as high-ranking, government ministers will always, doubtless, give them a higher profile than their rare peers in the civil service, as far as I'm aware without peers in recent centuries of our history. Still, what do I know that isn't in the public domain in one form or other? Maybe we have had some, mute inglorious Gateses and Clarkes and we just don't know about them. But I doubt it. Women? Probably dozens. But we won't hear about them until a century or two have passed, if then. Ironically, considering that fabled American materialism, I think our leaders tend to be more venal and lacking in character. I think the Lloyd George, Churchill and Obama types tend to be good readers of character and attract very high-quality people around them, when necessary.
As the first Prime Minister of the Labour Government, voted in by a large majority after WWII, which effectively created the welfare state, and which, in its pristime state, utterly shamed the traitors of NuLab(c), Clement Attlee, it seems to me, has been very deliberately maligned and written off as a "nobody" by our corrupt right-wing media. Churchill, no friend of the people in peace-time, hated him, as did all the Tories of his day. Maybe one day, someone will write a biography of Attlee that will surprise us. After all, "By their fruit, ye shall know them". And the welfare state, always long overdue of course in every land, has been good to say the least.
On the same topic, Lloyd George should be at least as well-known as Churchill, but his story is really little known. I was probably in my fifties before I read about him. There is a saying in Wales: "My father knew Lloyd George." The other day, my mother, in her nineties, was surprised to learn that I had not heard her mention she had met him as another passenger in the same railway-carriage on a train to London when she was a young woman training to be a nurse. Maybe she had told me long ago, as it would have meant nothing to me, but I certainly don't remember it. She has often has a creative memory, but not about something like this.
As regards Obama's handling of the most guilty-seeming, fraudulent architects of this economic crisis, I suspect he wisely considers that allowing more than one or two sets of high-ranking malefactors at a time to be pursued through the courts, would be a recipe for trouble, maybe even giving those in the pending tray enough rope would be more productive ..... He's a player of rare subtlety, isn't he? But frustrating to follow, when so much has gone wrong so dreadfully.
Anyway, I have to say, I'm actually a little moved when I read about outstanding public servants like those of my little pantheon, "shining like good deeds in a naughty world", none of them could have been a plaster saint or a Solomon for wisdom, all the time. But the latter, I think, most of the time, and the former much of it.
To my great chagrin, and unlike the founder of the Labour Party, although both were brought up by Methodist and/or Christian parents Lloyd George and Nye Bevan, neither, had a personal Christian faith. But that has been a common refrain, I think in salvation history. The current Jewish state was originally settled by secular Jews/Israelis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lloyd_Georgehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan
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