July 26, 2007
Another Great Rightist Posted by Alexander Burns at 09:35 AM EST The New York Times had an interesting story yesterday about a contest to name “the greatest Portuguese who ever lived.” The contest was held by the Portuguese television station RTP, and it allowed people to vote on their nation’s greatest son by telephone, much as winners are chosen on American Idol. This unscientific survey became controversial when the man who came out on top was António de Oliveira Salazar, the fascist dictator who ran Portugal from 1932 until 1968. He beat out Vasco da Gama and Henry the Navigator, among others. Some are interpreting this as a sign of Portugal’s increasing frustration with its second-tier status in the European Union. “Today,” the Times writes, “Portugal is the poorest country in Western Europe, and its recent history is marred by corruption scandals.” When it became a democracy in the 1970s, Portugal hoped for better fortunes than these. Similar nostalgia for autocracy has shown up in other frustrated states, like Russia. In 2003, a fifth of Russians remembered Stalin as “wise and humane,” and 31 percent said they’d take him as their leader. It’s not far-fetched to posit a connection between such sentiments and the disappointments of the Putin and Yeltsin presidencies. One thing that seems funny about Salazar’s performance in this survey, though, is that it fits in well with a growing trend in “greatest person” contests: Rightists almost always win. Churchill topped a 2002 survey that selected the 100 greatest Britons. De Gaulle was France’s choice for the leadoff slot, beating Napoleon and Marie Curie. Konrad Adenauer won out in Germany. In a History Channel survey, Americans picked Reagan as the first among equals. There are obviously differences between the kinds of rightism that these men represented, and it would be asinine to dump both Churchill and Salazar in any narrower ideological bracket. But the pattern is nevertheless striking: there are no men of the left topping these lists—except in Canada, where the welfare-state pioneer Tommy Douglas was designated that country’s “greatest.” It goes without saying that these greatness surveys are totally ridiculous. In Britain’s, Princess Diana beat Isaac Newton, and David Beckham edged out Charles Dickens. The pattern of winners might teach us something all the same. The conclusion I might draw is that right-of-center leaders from the recent past are generally the best focal points for popular nostalgia. Whatever their differences as leaders, Reagan, Salazar, Churchill, Adenauer, and de Gaulle are all remembered for their belligerent, can-do nationalism. This attitude may not always have produced the best policies, but it has allowed these men to live in popular memory as representations of supposedly more straightforward times. I’m not sure if that signals something good or bad about how memory works. I do know that if I lived in Portugal, I’d be disappointed.
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