Election Results
* Over 40 years ago, when I was on the staff of the supreme NATO commander near Versailles, I had the good fortune to meet an elder French statesman who had been the chief of staff of Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau’s Cabinet at the end of World War I.
He told me of a maxim that Clemenceau applied in selecting his Cabinet. He didn’t want anyone who hadn’t been an activist or even an extremist (or, to use the French term, “radical,” just as Clemenceau and my friend had been at the time of the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s) at the debut of a political career, and who continued to be one when aspiring to a leadership position.
The results of the Nov. 3 election as analyzed by Ronald Brownstein (Nov. 9) seem to confirm the old French expression: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
JACK BRAMSON
Los Angeles
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