Politicians who find themselves in hot water often look for ways of minimizing the damage they have caused to their careers. This they do through diverting attention to other areas, to persuade people they are yet on top of things.
The lesson coming out of all this exercise is that it is generally futile, for nothing can be more harmful for a society than to be subjected to the spectacle of a leader, who is clearly damaged goods, clinging on to power.
Boris Johnson has been putting up a brave fight to hang on to office as Britain’s prime minister. It has not mattered to him that all the opprobrium hurled at him, one of the latest instances being that from his predecessor Theresa May, requires him to call it a day.
The Sue Gray Report should have been the point where Johnson would resign. He has shown little inclination in doing that. Instead, trying to salvage his reputation, he has been busy in Kyiv on a mission to confront Russia over the situation in Ukraine.
A crucial lesson in our times is that when leaders are weak at home, they lose credibility abroad. The global leaders they interact with, or think they interact with, realize only too well that politicians who are up against difficulties at home could soon be making their way out of office.
It, therefore, stands to reason that Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz, and all the other powerful leaders of the West will listen to Boris Johnson in all politeness even as they know that he is today a bruised leader.
Those Covid-time parties at 10 Downing Street have brought him to this pass. Diplomacy conducted by a leader damaged at home ends up in little more than a sorry effort at damage control. Weakened leaders are incapable of demonstrating diplomatic finesse.
One needs to go back to Richard Nixon. In 1974, as the Watergate scandal swirled around Washington and drew closer to the Oval Office of the White House, the beleaguered US president thought a fresh foray in diplomacy would help him survive the crisis. In June of that year, he travelled to the Middle East, meeting such leaders as Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
Having played a truly defining role in reshaping American foreign policy, beginning with his ground-breaking trip to China in February 1972, Nixon entertained the hope that diplomacy would push the crisis at home under the rug.
His hope was misplaced, for -- barely two months later -- in August 1974, he was forced to resign, the first US president to do so. It is a lesson Boris Johnson should bear in mind. Domestic crises are never resolved by bonhomie with statesmen abroad.
Leadership is decent when embattled politicians know when to call it quits. In West Germany, as it was at the time, Chancellor Willy Brandt could well have hung on to office even after a communist East German was discovered on his staff. That too was in 1974, a few months before Nixon’s resignation.
Brandt, the man behind Ostpolitik, the statesman who knelt in Warsaw in penance over the Nazi atrocities against Jews, lost little time in making his way out of power. Turn back to the United States. President Lyndon Johnson, battered by Vietnam and increasing protests against the escalation in the war, knew he could not carry on without his dignity getting further frayed.
It might well be that, despite Senator Eugene McCarthy’s strong showing at the New Hampshire primary in February 1968, Johnson could have prevailed and could have won a hard-fought battle for a second term in the White House. He chose to abdicate.
Not all leaders do that. Indeed, when some among them find themselves in trouble domestically, they opt for measures that only undermine their leadership a good deal more. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, once the judgement of the Allahabad High Court in 1975 disqualifying her from membership of the Lok Sabha was pronounced, could have added to her reputation as a stateswoman had she chosen to resign and fight her legal battle in court.
She went for the unthinkable: She clamped a state of emergency all over the country, had opposition politicians and journalists carted off to prison and placed the media under severe restrictions. Her younger son Sanjay Gandhi rose in power and influence, damaging his mother’s reputation further. Indira Gandhi paid the price. And then she came back to power. Even so, the emergency and all the ramifications from it have remained a stigma on the history of her political leadership.
Leaders must know when and where to draw the line. The formidable Margaret Thatcher, once her cabinet colleagues began to rise in revolt against her leadership, chose to make a sad exit from power. She could have fought back but did not. Charles de Gaulle remained true to his pledge of resigning the presidency if he lost a referendum he called in April 1969.
A lesser politician might have chosen to renege on such a promise, but not De Gaulle. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev was a diminished leader following the putsch of August 1991. With the rise of Boris Yeltsin, he saw little chance of staying on. Besides, the Soviet Union was fragmenting. He knew his time had come. He walked away into the sunset.
Boris Johnson is adamant about staying in office despite the unraveling nature of his leadership. Back in 1963, John Profumo, the war minister in Harold Macmillan’s government, misled parliament on his association with Christine Keeler. A few days later, caught in the act of lying, he admitted he had been economical with the truth. He went out of office.
Johnson is aware of that episode, certainly. Or could it be that he is deliberately looking away from it?
Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.
