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America Hearts Churchill’s Giant Bust

Churchill in a polka dot bow tie

Like Elizabeth II, Winston Churchill seems to be a British personage Americans give more of a shit about than actual Britons do.

Last week, in the capital—the United States capital, that is—American leaders gathered to fête the dead old Tory with the unveiling of a massive bust in the National Statuary Hall. It was sort of hilarious. In what must have been a career low, Roger Daltrey of The Who showed up to awkwardly perform “Won’t Get Fooled Again” before an audience filled with people like House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker John Boehner, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, and a couple hundred other losers.

Pelosi, a master wordsmith, referred to the scowl slapped onto Churchill bust’s as a “commanding gaze.” An ever-weeping Boehner spoke of the “beautiful and, of course, special relationship” with Great Britain that blossomed under Churchill. Beautiful? At times the relationship was effective, maybe. The great tanned baby also called Churchill “the best friend America ever had.” As The American Conservative’s Daniel Larison wrote, France’s Louis XVI is probably the best friend America ever had. But never mind real history: Boehner announced that the area where Churchill’s bust will rest evermore is now cleverly renamed the “Freedom Foyer.”

Why does America mythologize the heroism of Churchill so, so deeply when, from the American point of view, he was the guy whose country we bailed out during World War II?

Larison writes, “I suspect that many Americans still venerate Churchill so excessively in part because WWII was the last and perhaps only foreign war that the U.S. fought in the 20th century that is considered a success.” And World War II, despite being the biggest killer of human beings in military history, is that happy time the United States wrested final control of the title of premier global capitalist superpower from Britain—so thanks for letting us do that, Churchill! We just love the idea of this British chap begging us to come over and save the world.

Writes Jacob Heilbrunn at The National Interest:

Churchill has become the statesman that American politicians routinely invoke. George W. Bush stuck his bust in the White House. Barack Obama got into a bit of hot water when he removed it—insufficient piety. John Kerry recently announced that facing down Syria on chemical weapons was a “Churchill moment.” Neoconservatives routinely use his name to invoke a new Munich—whenever and wherever possible. Whether Churchill would recognize himself in all the fulsome tributes is somewhat questionable. His career was a failure—or would have been seen as one—had the Second World War not occurred. He had switched from Tory to Liberal back to Tory and was widely viewed as unreliable and unstable.

But in Washington, Churchill has become a vital strut in the belief that American is an exceptional nation, destined to bring democracy abroad.

However, there is a thread that winds through the sharp, fanatical rise in Churchill worship seen over the last few years: the Barack Obama presidency. The Washington Post explains how Churchill’s bust appeared on the U.S. political scene: “About two years ago, Boehner authored a resolution to add an image of the legendary British leader to the Capitol, honoring the 70th anniversary of Churchill’s address to Congress in December 1941 and the enduring relationship between the United States and United Kingdom.” Is that it?

More likely, Boehner’s bust resolution is a base-pandering measure passed in response to the unforgotten (in right-wing circles) tale of Barack Obama having a Churchill bust removed from his Oval Office. To right-wingers, Obama’s removal of the Churchill bust was believed to stem from a hatred of whites, or a personal grudge, or some other mysterious and ill-explained reason. In reality, according to the White House, the bust was removed because that particular piece of art was on loan, and the loan was up. Or, as the British Embassy told the Telegraph back in 2009, “It was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the president was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new president has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned.” (And, for the record, there is still a bust of Churchill in the White House, given to Lyndon B. Johnson in the sixties. It’s outside the Treaty Room.)

Nonetheless, in a strange 2011 radio interview, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee told Bryan Fischer of the American Values Association that Obama’s Churchill issue could just be chalked up to Obama’s “worldview:”

I’m quoting a British newspaper who really were expressing the outrage of the Brits over that bust being returned and the point was that they felt like, due to Obama’s father and grandfather, it could be that his version and view of the Mau Mau Revolution was very different than most of the people who perhaps would grow up in the United States. And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it’s, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.

In other words, Obama hates white people and has plans for them, and so for reasons best known to themselves, conservatives have taken to Churchill as a sort of idol representing opposition to the Obama agenda.