Not Knowing Jack

I don't often make political commentary in this blog. Once in a while, however, I find myself sufficiently perturbed to comment on political matters.

Recently, the lawfully-elected parliament of the urbanised Machiavellian city-state of Singapore has decided that its ministers should be granted a salary increase of about S$1m over and above their existing salary of about S$1.2m. (At the time of this writing, US$1 is about S$1.50.) The arguments for the pay increase range from dubious to clever, to competent and valid. It is not my place to discuss whether or not these ministers should have their pay increased - that issue has been adequately covered elsewhere in the blogosphere and I shan't be providing links: you can easily find them in the world of Tomorrow, for example.

But there was one particular argument which stood out for what I felt was its inherent... hubris, perhaps? This argument came from the otherwise relatively competent, relatively erudite and relatively informative mouth of Member of Parliament K Shanmugam. You can find his speech here in its entirety.

If you look at that linked document and scroll down to paragraphs 33 and 34 (don't worry, they're numbered very nicely in the document), you will find this:

[33] After the 17th Century, the British reformed their system and by early 20th Century, a top Minister like Churchill was earning £5,000. I am told that that would be about £350,000 in today’s terms. That is roughly what our MR4 was. But British Ministerial salaries have however not kept pace with inflation. It is probably not politically feasible in the UK. But that does not make it right. As an aside, if you read Roy Jenkins’ biography of Churchill, you will see that Churchill also made money by writing. For example, he received an advance of £8,000 for a book (about £550,000 now) in early 20th Century just before he took office. He wrote several books, and was a good, sought after writer.

[34] Likewise in the US. In 1960, President Kennedy was getting US$150,000. If Presidential salaries had kept pace with inflation, the salary would be higher than the US$450,000 that the US President now gets.

What's wrong with those two paragraphs? I guess I instinctively shy away from comparing the gentlemen who run Singapore with Sir Winston Churchill and President John F Kennedy. The problems tackled by Churchill (for example, the threat of Hitler and the isolation of Britain) and Kennedy (the Cold War and the Cuban incident) seem somehow larger than the economic concerns of a small nation-state, no matter how important it has made itself to the global community.

I am sure that Singapore has always punched above its weight, ever since Foreign Minister Sinnathamby Rajaratnam declared that intent to the United Nations in the early years of Singapore's existence as an independent state. I am sure that for many people it is a nice place to live. But I am not at all sure that Singapore's former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, and Singapore's current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, are comparable in terms of ability or potential with Churchill or Kennedy.

Don't get me wrong. There are lots of sources which will tell you about the negative sides of these leaders. It is always fashionable to demythologize in hindsight, and it is always a good thing for history that this is done. It is difficult to say what Lee (or Lee) would have done as the leader of Britain under siege by Hitler's Luftwaffe, or as the leader of the US when Soviet missiles began to appear on Cuba. It is easy to say unflattering things about any of the politicians in this post; they are all human beings with various virtues, flaws and other qualities. We can make any number of powerful but irrelevant ad hominem attacks on the historical reputations of these men, and a few might be legal as well as true.

But some points of direct comparison can be made, based on Shanmugam's speech as cited above. He doesn't tell us much, but he tells us that Churchill was a good writer. Churchill had a 60-year political career. These two points - political longevity and literary prowess - are the only points Shanmugam raises. Correction: he raises the latter and very tangentially implies the former, but the former point holds, nevertheless.

In Singapore, PM-emeritus Lee Kuan Yew still continues to draw a Churchillian salary, continues to have an extended political career, and has written a few books. The first volume of his political autobiography is called The Singapore Story.

Well, here is a reasonably fair account of Churchill's writings. The article seems to say that his historical writings are of obvious value although tainted with some equally obvious flaws. He wrote histories which were ennobled by his gift of rhetoric and demeaned by his subjectivity, but they were such good books that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature on their strength. Churchill's honours (and his legacy) can be evaluated against Lee's by any reader here, and you can form your own judgement about whether one deserves the pay of the other.

Somehow though, when I evaluate paragraph 34, Lloyd Bentsen's one quote-that-will-live-forever comes to mind. For all JFK's flaws, a fair portion of the subsequent fate of the world was in his hands. And history would probably have to say to any one of Singapore's ministers, "I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Minister, you're no Jack Kennedy."