Statesman (pronounced steyts-muhn)
(1) Certain politicians with a favorable reputation (a
rare breed), especially those associated with international relations.
(2) A person (not of necessity an elected politician) experienced
in the art & science of government or versed in the administration of
government affairs, especially those involved in diplomacy.
(3) A product name used variously of such things as cars,
ships and (especially) newspapers and periodicals.
1585–1595: A construct was state + s + -man, modeled on steersman (in nautical use, one who steers a ship or other vessel (the helmsman)). State was from the early thirteen century Middle English noun stat, from both the Old French estat and the Latin status (manner of standing, attitude, position, carriage, manner, dress, apparel; and other senses), from stare (to stand); a doublet of estate and status. The idea of “the polity” which evolved ultimately into the construct of the modern nation-state began to develop in fourteenth century Europe, notably the multi-entity Holy Roman Empire. In other European languages, the comparable words were the French être, the Greek στέω (stéo), the Italian stare, the Portuguese estar, the Romanian sta, and the Spanish estar.
The suffix –man developed from the noun and was applied describe (1) someone (the original implication obviously implied male) who is an expert in an area or who takes part in an activity, (2) someone employed or holds a position in an area, (3) someone possessing particular characteristics relating to a topic or area, (4) someone (in this case explicitly male) of a certain nationality or sub-national geographical identity (not a universal use which varied according to the structure of the root word (other suffixes including –an, -ian etc) or (5) in Admiralty jargon, a ship which has special characteristics relating to a trade or area (merchantman, Greenlandman etc) which produced the amusing linguistic paradox of forms such as “she’s a merchantman” because of the convention ships were always referred to in the feminine. Man was from the Middle English man, from the Old English mann (human being, person, man), from the Proto-West Germanic mann, from the Proto-Germanic mann-, from the primitive Indo-European mon- (human being, man”).
The derived form statesmanship described an idealized conception of how a politician should behave. It's now less common, probably less so because the standard of politicians has so obviously declined than a reluctance to use a word thought gender-loaded; to say "statesmanship" might now be thought a micro-aggression. The suffix -ship was from the Middle English -schipe & -shippe, from the Old English -sċiepe, from the Proto-West Germanic -skapi, from the Proto-Germanic -skapiz. The equivalent forms in other languages included the Scots -schip, the West Frisian -skip, the Dutch -schap, the German -schaft, the Swedish -skap and the Icelandic -skapur. It was appended to nouns to form a new noun denoting a property or state of being, time spent in a role, or a specialized union, a popular use being the way a set of social duties associated with a particular role shape or develop one's character (fellowship, ownership et al). Other suffixes used for similar purposes (property or state of being) include -ness, -hood, -itude, -th, -ity & -dom.
Meeting a statesman: Lindsay Lohan meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye since 2003), Presidential Palace, Ankara, Türkiye, 27 January 2017.
The informal noun superstatesman is used to refer to
someone especially successful (especially in international relations) while to
say of someone or their actions that they possess the quality of being unstatesmanlike,
it’s a criticism which implies they have not reached the expected standard (ie they’re
acting more like a politician). The term
"elder statesman" generally is used either of (1) a respected
political leader (not of necessity all that elderly but usually retired or at
least withdrawn from the controversies of front-line politics) or (2), by
extension, a prominent and respected person in any field who usually is retired
or inactive with their involvement restricted to commentaries. Statesman & statesmanship are nouns and statesmanlike
& statesmanly are adjectives; the noun plural is statesmen (except in
commercial use when Statesman is used as a product name in which case the
plural should be Statesmans (although Statesmen seems not uncommon)). The feminine noun stateswoman and the
gender-neutral statesperson are more recent creations (both with the same
derived adjectives on the model of those from statesman) and notably used less
frequently.
The usually told joke is that a statesman is a “dead politician” and there’s some element of truth in that because the reputation of politicians certainly seems often to improve once they’ve had the decency to drop dead. Unfairly or not, politicians often are characterized those dedicated to the pursuit of power, advancing their own interests or those of their party and making decisions that cater to short-term political gains (although they also have a great interest in accumulating money and many taxpayers would be surprised to learn just how much of their money ends up each year in the bank accounts of politicians; such is the array of “allowances & entitlements” (often opaque and sometimes secret) that the total is some distance from their notional annual salary). Anyway, because the focus of a politician is on winning elections and pursuing the agendas of whomever is funding them (or offering to in their post-political life), the term “politician” usually carries negative connotations, implying opportunism, manipulation and a lack of concern for anything except self-interest. Old Jack Lang (1876–1975; Premier of New South Wales 1925-1927 & 1930-1932) used to tell the young seeking a career in politics his best advice was "...in any race, always back the horse called self-interest; it'll be the only one having a go."
Two statesmen meeting to discuss matters of common interest: Dr Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1975 & secretary of state 1937-1977, left) and General Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006; dictator of Chile 1973-1990, right), Santiago, Chile, 1976.
The term statesman carries usually positive connotations
and is associated with someone in public life who has demonstrated wisdom,
integrity and a vision which includes the interest of the public and this rare breed is characterized by their
commitment to serving the greater good, often transcending narrow partisan
interests in favor of broader national or societal goals. It’s probably easier
for a politician to be thought statesmanlike if they come into office having
already established an illustrious reputation through pervious public service,
such as Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US president 1953-1961) who, before he entered the White
House, was one of the nation’s most respected soldiers. Actually, in the US where appointments to the
cabinet don’t require election, it’s more likely one can be thought a
statesman because one need never dirty one’s hands with the nasty business of
electoral politics. Serving as secretary
of state for a scant twelve months between 1950-1951, General George Marshall
(1880–1959; US Army chief of staff 1939-1945) is remembered as a “great
statesman” because he looked the part and the Marshall Plan (the post-war
re-financing of Europe with US dollars) bore his name although it was something
he neither conceived, designed or administered.
Another of America’s chief diplomats, Dr Henry Kissinger, is
still described by some as a “great statesman” (although many others prefer “war
criminal”). Certainly, politicians good
and evil are aware that how they’re remembered is based on who gets to write
the histories. Late in World War II
(1939-1945), when things really weren’t going well for the Nazis, Dr Joseph
Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945), well aware of the
enormity of the crimes the regime (of which he was a prominent part) had committed and one of the few realists among
a generally deluded lot, was said to have commented: “Either we are going to go down in history as the greatest statesmen of
all time, or as the greatest criminals.”
Although that phrase has for decades been attributed to him, it’s not
certain he used quite those words but his diary entries and collaborated contemporary
testimony from others leave little doubt that was what was on his mind.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had no doubt what qualities defined statesmanship. In the prison diary assembled from the huge volume of fragments he had smuggled out of Spandau prison while serving the twenty year sentence he was lucky to receive for war crimes & crimes against humanity (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau, the Secret Diaries), pp 451 William Collins Inc, 1976), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recounted one of the Führer's not infrequent monologues, a small part of which mentioned the matter:
“Whoever succeeds me must be sure to have an opening for a new war. We never want a static situation where that sort of thing hangs in doubt In future peace treaties we must therefore always leave open a few questions that will provide a pretext. Think of Rome and Carthage, for instance. A new war was always built right into every peace treaty. That's Rome for you! That's statesmanship.”
The Holden Statesman
Holden was the General Motors (GM) outpost in Australia and in the 1950s and 1960s, for a variety of reasons (not wholly related to the dynamic qualities of the cars they sold), the operation had been highly successful, for many years enjoying a market share as high as 50% odd. By the early 1970s, increased competition had eroded Holden’s dominance although it remained the market leader in most sectors it contested with one exception: the executive sedan. Ford in 1967 had effectively re-defined this market by conjuring up a long-wheelbase version of the mass-market Falcon which overnight rendered obsolete some of the antiquated British competition and provided an attractively less expensive alternative to the bigger Fords, Chevrolets, Pontiacs and Dodges, imported via Canada to take advantage of the lower tariffs imposed on products from the Commonwealth (the successor regime to the old imperial preference scheme). Although well-suited to Australian conditions, the US cars were becoming increasingly expensive because of movements in the exchange rate (the Bretton-Woods system (1944) of “fixed” currency rates was more an interacting series of “managed floats”). So, developed very cheaply with only detail changes and some (what now seems modest) bling, the elongated Falcon was in 1967 released under the Fairlane name (used earlier in Australia for both a full-sized and intermediate North American import) and it proved an instant success, selling not only in large numbers but with a profit margin unmatched in the local industry. Of course, one victim of this success was Ford’s own imported Galaxie, sales of which slowed to a trickle, demand now restricted mostly to governments which admired the "statesmanlike" presence the big machines lent the politicians being chauffeured around. The Galaxies would remain available in Australia until 1973.
Holden couldn’t let such an obvious market be ignored but their first response seems bizarre and was treated as such at the time. Instead of following Ford’s lead and stretching their platform to create a long wheelbase alternative, Holden took their previous top-of-the-line Premier and extended the trunk (boot) by eight inches (200 mm), increasing luggage capacity and presumably pleasing those carrying stuff like bags of golf clubs but that really answered a question nobody had been asking. Named the Brougham (a name with a tradition dating back to horseless carriages but rapidly becoming popular with US manufacturers), ascetically, the long-tail really didn’t work because it rendered the shape fundamentally unbalanced and the market response was muted, Brougham sales never making a dent in the Fairlane’s dominance. Time has been kinder and the Brougham now has a cult following among collectors, especially the early versions which used a 307 cubic inch Chevrolet V8 because Holden's own 308 hadn't reached production. Ironically, the mildly-tuned 307 isn't one of the more highly regarded iterations of the small-block Chevrolet V8 but the allure of the name remains strong. In the early 1980s, when the things were unwanted and could be bought for a few hundred dollars, one enterprising customizer built a two-door version and while some of the detailing was lacking, the basic lines worked surprisingly well but as Chrysler and Ford discovered in the 1970s, although the market for such things in the US was huge (the segment was called "the personal coupe"), in Australia it was was small and shrinking so it's as well Holden didn't try their own.
In 1971, Holden did respond with a long wheelbase
executive sedan, this time called the Statesman. Apparently, there had previously been only one short-lived car called a Statesman (joining a governmental-themed roll-call manufacturers had previously used including Senator, Diplomat, President, Ambassador, Envoy and even Dictator). This time, the styling was outstanding and,
especially if buyers could resist the lure of the then inexplicably popular
vinyl roof, the Statesman was an elegant execution, details such as the split
egg-crate grill especially admired. The frontal
treatment was also a clever design because the whole HQ range used a “nose-cone”
making face-lifts much cheaper and the same approach applied to the tail, the
tail-lamps used on the commercial range and the station wagons re-purposed. Holden had learned well from Ford’s example. Structurally, the Statesman following the
Fairlane’s price points, the basic car aimed at the hire-car market and
available with a six cylinder engine and bench seats to make it a genuine
six-seater while the Statesman De Ville featured a higher level of trim and
used either Holden’s 308 cubic inch (5.0 litre) or the imported Chevrolet 350
(5.7). Just to emphasize how special the
Statesman was, the Holden name didn’t appear either on the car or its
advertising, the local operation instead seeking, and receiving, GM’s permission
to used Cadillac’s famous wreath on the badge. All the publicity material said "Statesman by General Motors" but few were fooled and eventually the trickery was abandoned.
The misstep Ford got away with: The 1972 ZF Fairlane (left) was criticized because it looked little different from the basic Falcon; the 1976 ZH (right) rectified that, an eight-year old US design this time providing the template.
The Statesman sold better than the Brougham but didn’t
threaten the Fairlane’s dominant position in the sector, even though Ford in
1972 made the fundamental mistake when releasing its new version of not
ensuring there was sufficient product differentiation; the new ZF Fairlane
looked like a somewhat bloated XA Falcon but such was the inertia of the name
and the solid reputation for reliability and resale value that fleet-managers and
private buyers remained loyal and it wouldn’t be until 1976 that the problem of
the Fairlane’s comparative anonymity was rectified and that by bolting on the
styling from the 1968 Mercury; that’s how things were done then. However, Ford in 1973 scored its other big
hit by stretching the Falcon still further to create the LTD, a capable but gaudy machine
which so appealed to governments and corporations that it for decades dominated
those fleets. Like the Fairlane, the LTD
was a highly profitable package developed at low cost and noted for its bling
such as the aviation style controls for the air-conditioning. With the coming of the LTD, the imported
Galaxie was withdrawn from the Australian market.
Holden made no attempt to match the LTD, leaving the
lucrative segment to Ford while the Statesman soldiered on although, matching
the Fairlane, the slow-selling base model was dropped when the range was
revised in 1974, along with the Chevrolet 350 V8 which had been fitted only to
around 600 Statesmans (some of which were exported to New Zealand and South
Africa with some unpleasing detail changes). The structure of the range changed
with the De Ville now the base car and a new model, the Caprice, sitting atop,
the differences between the two all in bling, the mechanical specification
identical, both using the Holden 308 V8 and the now more reliable Trimatic
automatic transmission. Through two face-lifts
(HJ & HX), the Statesman was relatively unchanged during the troubled and
difficult mid 1970s, most attention devoted to devising plumbing to lower
emissions, something which worked but at the cost also of decreasing power and
drivability; all that increased was the fuel consumption and the price.
However, in 1979, Holden surprised the market by splicing
a new Statesman between the De Ville & Caprice: the Statesman SL/E. Although mechanically unchanged from the rest
of the range, the SL/E was advertised as the “sporty” Statesman, something made
vaguely plausible by the huge improvement in handling rendered when the HZ cars
were released in 1978 with what Holden called “radial tuned suspension”
(RTS). Unfortunately, the market found
the idea of a “sporty Statesman” about as improbable as the conjunction sounds
and the car was not a success, presumably because it was neither one thing or
the other, the De Ville fundamentally the same only cheaper and the Caprice
better equipped and more prestigious. Whether the SL/E might have been better received had there been a
genuine attempt to improve performance can't be known but power without an
increase in emissions was hard to find in 1979 and Holden had the misfortune within
a couple of months of the launch, the “second oil-shock” hit and V8 engines
were suddenly again unfashionable. Fortunately for Holden, the SL/E had not been an expensive programme, the wheels, badges and much of the bling borrowed from models already in production.
Still, the price of petrol not withstanding, by then, the next model Statesman was locked in
for release in 1980. The WB Statesman De
Ville & Caprice existed because, cognizant of the uncertainty around the
stability of the world oil market, Holden had replaced their mainstream range
with the Commodore, a smaller (critically, narrower) car based on a European
platform developed by Opel, GM’s German outpost. The smaller machine was not suitable as the
base for a Fairlane competitor so the decision was taken to update the HZ, even
though the platform dated back to 1971.
What was achieved was commendable given the budget although the
designers were disappointed that with the release of the new Fairlane & LTD
in 1979, Ford had staged a pre-emptive hit with the six-window roof-line Holden
had planned as their exclusive. One
genuine difference though was the Caprice’s hand-assembled grill, made from
metal in an age when extruded plastic assemblies had long become industry
practice but although much admired, it wasn’t enough to save the dated platform
and the last Statesmans left the factory in 1985. Holden did though flirt with a stay of execution because by 1982 it was clear the world would soon be awash with oil (what would come to be called the "oil glut"; the CIA's infamous 1975 prediction the world would "...by 1983 run out of oil" clearly wrong) and there were thoughts of a "low cost" version of the WB Statesman, resurrecting a proposal which seriously had been contemplated during the previous decade. That was a response to the booming sales Ford was enjoying for it's bigger, wider Falcon range but the decision was taken to focus efforts instead on a bigger, wider Commodore, a vehicle released in 1988 which enjoyed great success.
One quirk of the WB’s life however was that Peter Brock (1945–2006), a racing car driver who had created a successful business selling modified, high-performance Commodores, decided to resurrect the Statesman SL/E but this time make it genuinely “sporty”. Labeled the Statesman Magnum, the car could be based on either the De Ville or Caprice according the buyer’s taste & budget and because Brock’s record-keeping was at the time a little haphazard, it’s not clear how many were built and it may not even have reached three figures. Unlike the SL/E, the Magnum's 308 V8 benefited from the addition of the improved components Brock used on the Commodores: the cylinder heads, inlet manifold, air cleaner and exhaust system combining to produce a significant lift in output (power increasing from 170 to 250 hp (126 to 188kW) while, perhaps more relevantly for the target market, torque rose from 265 to 315 lb/ft (361 to 428Nm)). Nor was the chassis neglected, Bilstein gas shock absorbers added all round while the front suspension geometry was revised and up-rated springs were fitted, the anti-roll bars thicker & stiffer. Externally, most striking were the 16 x 8-inch Momo Polaris aluminium wheels while a variety of color schemes were offered, including the toning down of the chrome fittings to something darker and more menacing. The press response was favorable, the already fine dynamics the platform had possessed since the debut of RTS now able better to be exploited with the additional power the Magnum provided, more than matching even the Chevrolet 350 fitted to some HQ Statesmans which had been offered only in a mild state of tune. However, as the American industry had discovered in the 1960s, those who want high-performance vehicles prefer usually that they be in smaller packages and, as Ford two decades would re-discover when the Fairlane G220 was greeted with a polite yawn, those who wanted big luxury and those who wanted something smaller and “sporty” were two different populations, at least at certain stages in their lives. In a sense though, Holden had the last laugh, the Statesman and Caprice later revived when the Commodore became larger and better suited to a wheelbase stretch and together they first out-sold and then outlived the Fairlane & LTD.
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