Political Resurrection in the Twentieth Century

Political Resurrection in the Twentieth Century

Previous Books The Fall and Rise of Political Leaders: Olof Palme, Olusegun Obasanjo, Indira Gandhi (2011) The Dreyfus Affair (2002) Paul Lafargue and the Flowering of French Socialism, 1882 1911 (1998) Paul Lafargue and the Founding of French Marxism, 1842 1882 (1991) An Age of Conflict (1990) President and Parliament: A Short History of the French Presidency (1984) Alexandre Millerand: The Socialist Years (1977) Socialism Since Marx (1973) The Third French Republic, 1870 1940 (1966) The Dreyfus Affair: Tragedy of Errors (1963)

Political Resurrection in the Twentieth Century The Fall and Rise of Political Leaders Leslie Derfler

POLITICAL RESURRECTION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Copyright Leslie Derfler, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-1-137-02785-6 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-43979-9 ISBN 978-1-137-02786-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137027863 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Derfler, Leslie. Political resurrection in the twentieth century : the fall and rise of political leaders / Leslie Derfler. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-137-02785-6 (alk. paper) 1. Political leadership History 20th century. 2. Political leadership Case studies. 3. Gaulle, Charles de, 1890 1970. 4. France Politics and government 20th century. 5. Per?n, Juan Domingo, 1895 1974. 6. Argentina Politics and government 1943 1955. 7. Argentina Politics and government 1955 1983. 8. Trudeau, Pierre Elliott. 9. Canada Politics and government 1945 1980. I. Title. JC330.3.D48 2012 303.3 40922 dc23 2012017036 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: December 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents Preface vii Part I Charles de Gaulle: The Crossing of the Desert 1 De Gaulle: Creation 3 2 De Gaulle: Termination 9 3 De Gaulle: Interment 13 4 De Gaulle: Resurrection 47 Part II Juan Domingo Perón: We Need to Get the Unions to Come Here, Right Away 5 Perón: Creation 73 6 Perón: Termination 95 7 Perón: Interment 111 8 Perón: Resurrection 137 Part III Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Reason over Passion 9 Trudeau: Creation 161 10 Trudeau: Termination 195 11 Trudeau: Interment 213 12 Trudeau: Resurrection 225 Conclusion 245 Notes 253 Index 269

Preface In war one dies only once. In politics, one dies only to rise again. Talleyrand The political history of the twentieth century takes into account several former heads of government who achieved the pinnacle of political power, fell from or relinquished power, and then after a period in the political wilderness regained it. Included among them are Winston Churchill (Great Britain), Charles de Gaulle (France), Indira Gandhi (India), Juan Perón (Argentina), Olof Palme (Sweden), Yitzhak Rabin (Israel), Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), and Pierre Elliott Trudeau (Canada). 1 Churchill s career, including the years spent in opposition after his fall from power in 1945 (as contrasted to what is commonly regarded as his wilderness years before his rise to power), is doutbtless the best known. For that reason, he is not included among the three leaders discussed in this book: De Gaulle, Perón, and Trudeau. While their careers are familiar to scholars, general readers may not be aware of de Gaulle s involvement in an authoritarian movement that sought to transcend existing political parties and place emphasis on French nationalism and imperialism. Nor are many aware of the extent of Péron s ability to manipulate his movement during 18 years of foreign exile, keeping it united and maintaining himself as its leader; or of Trudeau s repeated and successful campaigns rejecting the demands of Quebec s nationalist leaders to separate the province from the rest of Canada. I have also selected these three precisely because of their geographical diversity and because additional information about them has become available. Each of the three sections will open with a sketch of the subject s earlier career: the climb to and exercise of power. This part will be subtitled creation. The three remaining parts describe the fall ( termination ), time spent out of office ( interment ), and return to political power ( resurrection ).

viii Preface By placing greater emphasis than that customarily accorded by biographers not on their stay in, but on the time spent out of, office, on the interment that preceded their political resurrection, I will seek answers to such questions as the following: What did these heads of government do after their fall from power because of electoral defeats or simple decisions to resign and before they recovered it? Had they abandoned the idea of staging a political comeback? How did their interments affect their political outlooks? What lessons, if any, were learned from the fall? What accounted for their return to high political office, their resurrections. To what extent did mistakes made by their successors facilitate their reentry? I will conclude by comparing the political rise, fall, interments, and resurrections of the three in an attempt to unearth explanations for their political restorations and for the course of action taken once leadership was regained. The leaders have been the subject of numerous biographies, although even the most recent studies were published years ago and do not contain recently obtained material or newly conceived interpretations. Moreover, they minimize the time spent and activities undertaken during the years (in the case of Trudeau, months) out of office and before their return to it; in opposition, exile, or retirement. Nor is there any comparative biography that places emphasis on the space between a fall and a subsequent rise. Yet much of what happened during this period, both in terms of the abilities displayed by each as well as the shortcomings of their successors, helps explain their resurrections. In addition, it may be precisely the time spent out of high office that is of greatest interest to the biographer more concerned with the leader s story than with the political impact generated by the leader s career; that is, more concerned with the life than with the times. Certainly, this period would contain the meat and drink of the narrative historian s tale and may appeal to the interests of an audience wider than that of scholars alone: De Gaulle s expectation of a popular demand recalling him as premier after his sudden and unexpected resignation, his readiness to create a new national movement to regain office, and the more moderate, politically adept approach he took once back in it; Perón s apparent loss of political moorings after Eva s death, which, added to the economic difficulties besetting Argentina, contributed to his ouster by the military; Trudeau s quest to secure individual rather than collective rights for different linguistic groupings but within the framework of a single and united Canada.

Preface ix I started out by searching for commonalities among the eight and believe I found a few. But as I learned about their lives, I came to appreciate the importance of how such things as a prime minister s (Trudeau s) failing marriage left him unable to meet the challenges of an economy in crisis or how the impassioned rhetoric of a president s (Péron s) wife allowed him to pose as the moderate arbiter to her outspoken militancy and as a unifier of the nation. Because these things cannot be quantified or even measured, they contribute little to theoretical concept building. Still, I think they count, perhaps for a lot. The more I learned, the greater appeared the role of the unforeseen, the contingent, the uniqueness of the events. Consequently, the examples offered, those of de Gaulle, Perón, and Trudeau describing their respective rise to and fall from power, interim period in the political wilderness, and return to high office, not only provide material making for a more general level of analysis, but also reaffirm the individuality of the passage from rise to resurrection. The book is designed both for general readers and for scholars, and I have cited sources for most direct quotations and interpretations. Each account makes use of the latest renditions, which are based on recently made available archival and documentary sources. For instance, every reference to Argentina in the post World War II period reports stories of Perón s government welcoming escaped Nazis to Argentina (stories strengthened by the well-publicized captures of several high-ranking ones). Recent studies not only confirm the validity of these accounts, but also provide details previously unknown. What the book is not is a history of France in de Gaulle s lifetime, or Argentina during Perón s, or Canada during Trudeau s, although historical background is included to provide the necessary context. Nor does it display any explicit methodological apparatus, reveal references to the literature on regime change, or offer much in the way of structural analysis. It is rather the biographical dimension on which emphasis is placed; on the individual lives, particularly as they affected the respective rise, fall, and returns. Because it anticipates the interment and the resurrection that follows, the creation segment required greater length than anticipated. To take but one example, it was Perón s readiness to act as an arbiter to soften Eva s inflammatory outbursts for instance, her call for workers militias that so worried the military that did much to create his image as unifier and compromiser during his first term in office. I am again grateful to the library staff of Florida Atlantic University for securing materials, to Zella Linn for office help; to my teachers and

x Preface students from both of whom I learned much; and especially to the authors of the excellent biographies that made this study possible and to whom I dedicate it; and, above all, to my wife, Gunilla Derfler, for untiring support and patience. It hardly needs to be added that in view of the range of personalities and places considered, errors have surely emerged, and that I alone am responsible for them.