Change you can believe in (but can you trust it?)

Not too long ago, a highly publicized speech in Berlin gave encouragement to the notion that there is a politics of redemption and a politics of hope that can replace the worn-out politics of exploitation and despair.

"We are determined to profit from all those experiences which in past centuries have proved of value to mankind, politically and economically, both to the individual and to the community…. We wish… to be the champions of a peace which shall finally heal those wounds from which all are suffering…"

That is certainly "change we can believe in," but no, those are not the words of Barack Obama as he visited Berlin late last month. Rather, they were from a speech by Adolf Hitler when he assumed power over the new Reichstag on March 21, 1933. It is curious how upbeat and conciliatory Hitler sounded in those days, but after all, in 1933, Hitler was not yet the madman of Europe, but rather a charismatic, determined visionary who gave hope to a nation in the throes of economic decline, loss of international power and prestige, and failure of leadership. In other words, a politician who promoted "change we can believe in."

The obvious question that raises is whether we can trust our own passion for change, in this day and age, or whether we are subject to the same miscalculations and manipulations as the German people 75 years ago.

In Hitler's first address as chancellor, he sounded themes that will be familiar to Americans who have listened to the sonorous speeches of politicians such as Barack Obama. Like the "post-partisan" Obama, Hitler entreatied the Reichstag's politicians to "raise themselves above the doctrinaire conceptions of party politics and recognize the inevitable necessity of cooperation."

Hitler also alluded to a destiny he is fulfilling as the savior of his people: "The task, which fate has demanded that we fulfill, makes it our bounden duty to rise high above the petty considerations of everyday party politics. We are determined to restore once more unity of spirit and of determination to our people."

Compare this to Obama's words when he privately spoke to House Democrats last week as reported by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: "This is the moment… that the world is waiting for… I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Milbank referred to Obama's presumptuous attitude as hubris, a trait most commonly associated with tragic heroes who overreach their own greatness and bring ruin on themselves and often their countries as well. More and more, we have heard Obama refer to himself in messianic terms, which ought to scare people, but doesn't because they are so eager to believe there are easy solutions to complicated problems.

Of course, no one can claim to know Barack Obama's motives or intentions as he seeks the presidency of the United States. He may be entirely well-intended. But what we can ask is this: What are the responsibilities and obligations of the citizens of the United States to ensure that they elect someone whose stated intentions are not also his only qualifications for office? Or more bluntly: How easy is it for a politician, any politician, to lie his way into office? Feel free to substitute George W. Bush's name for Barack Obama in this column if that makes you feel comfortable. This is not about politics, but about personalities, and about the dangers of a populace that puts too much credence in the promises of a politician on the make.

A demagogue, after all, is someone who will say whatever is convenient to obtain power, and then will do whatever is expedient to keep it. Examples abound in history, although whether any American president has been a demagogue I will leave to each reader's individual imagination. Nonetheless, we need only look 90 miles off our own southern shore to see how easy it is to fool a country into trading liberty for the false promises of leadership.

In the modern era, Fidel Castro is a prime example of someone who turned personal charm into a catapult to autocracy. When he first surfaced as an opponent of the Batista government in the 1950s, he was hailed as a liberator, a champion of human rights and social justice. He spoke forcefully of the plight of the Cuban worker. Even today, knowing what we know about Castro's ultimate role as a dictator and oppressor, his words from 1953 ring out as a passionate defense of the oppressed worker:

"In terms of struggle, when we talk about people, we're talking about the six hundred thousand Cubans without work, who want to earn their daily bread honestly without having to emigrate from their homeland in search of a livelihood; the five hundred thousand farm laborers who live in miserable shacks, who work four months of the year and starve the rest, sharing their misery with their children, who don't have an inch of land to till and whose existence would move any heart not made of stone; the four hundred thousand industrial workers and laborers whose retirement funds have been embezzled, whose benefits are being taken away, whose homes are wretched quarters, whose salaries pass from the hands of the boss to those of the moneylender, whose future is a pay reduction and dismissal, whose life is endless work and whose only rest is the tomb… These are the people, the ones who know misfortune and, therefore, are capable of fighting with limitless courage! To these people whose desperate roads through life have been paved with the bricks of betrayal and false promises, we were not going to say: 'We will give you…' but rather: 'Here it is, now fight for it with everything you have, so that liberty and happiness may be yours!'"

No wonder that Castro had the support of the Cuban people and even the U.S. government as he sought to supplant the corrupt Batista government, which had come to power in a 1952 coup d'etat. He sounded like one of our own Founding Fathers, and he spoke of restoring Cuba's 1940 Constitution and holding free elections.

Indeed, Castro said that if he came to power, "Cuban policy in the Americas would be one of close solidarity with the democratic peoples of this continent, and that all those politically persecuted by bloody tyrannies oppressing our sister nations would find generous asylum, brotherhood and bread in the land of Mart'; not the persecution, hunger and treason they find today. Cuba should be the bulwark of liberty and not a shameful link in the chain of despotism."

If you were a Cuban peasant, or even a Cuban intellectual, this, surely, was change you could believe in. But things turned out a little different.

Instead of elections, the Cuban people got chains. Instead of importing the politically persecuted to Cuba where they would find asylum, Castro wound up exporting his own politically persecuted to Miami and throughout Latin America. Instead of being a "bulwark of Liberty," Cuba became a self-imposed gulag where thousands were sentenced to a life of hard labor.

The lesson to be learned here is that the difference between a politician's promises and his later actions is as significant as the difference between a bridegroom's solemn promise and his later promiscuity.

Hitler, of course, knew all this, and he wrote about the power of propaganda and slogans extensively in his book "Mein Kampf" (translated as "My Struggle"). Here are a few examples:

-"The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands…"

-"It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided… As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered."

-"[T]he most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over."

-"In political matters feeling often decides more correctly than reason."

-"The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses."

-"[Propaganda] does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way…"

As an example of how propaganda works, we can look at a collection of Hitler's own speeches from 1933 called, "The New Germany Desires Work and Peace." There is not a hint of the chaos that would befall Europe as a result of Germany's love affair with its savior. Instead the book's introduction by Hitler's later propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, touts the twin themes of a stronger economy ("Nearly five million men and women are struggling to regain the positions they have lost in factories and offices… The Hitler Government has declared war on unemployment.") and peaceful relations ("The New Germany … has announced to the whole world, through the mouth of the chancellor himself… that it has no aggressive intentions whatever, that it does not wish to provoke anyone nor to stir up unrest.").

Nothing in there at all about cranking up the death camps, rolling the Panzer units into Paris, or launching a two-front war that would cost the lives of more than 70 million people. Just caring concern for the well-being of the German people who had been through admittedly tough times. "Work and Peace" - what could be less threatening?

So, with happy slogans like that, it's no surprise that Hitler's proselytes were both confused and hurt by those who doubted their leader, or questioned his motives. Goebbels wrote, "The world is still suspicious… . [It will only] appreciate the overwhelming importance of the internal revolution in Germany when Europe's need has become so great that people everywhere begin to realize that, without mutual understanding and respect between nations, peace cannot flourish and that the scourge of unemployment will continue to afflict the nations of the world."

What we learned instead was that we were right to be suspicious, and that we should never underestimate the power of slogans, no matter how positive.

Everyone hopes that the collective wisdom of the American people will not fail us when we elect our leaders. However, it would be naive indeed to think "it can't happen here," as Sinclair Lewis famously titled his 1936 novel about the election of a demagogue named Buzz Windrip who through oratory and lofty promises was able to lead the country into fascist dictatorship.

Yes, the Constitution provides certain safeguards, but not against human foibles. That has been clear from the start, as famously reported in the anecdote about Ben Franklin, who supposedly emerged from the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and told a curious woman awaiting news that Americans now had "a republic… if you can keep it."

Through fortune and fortitude, we have kept it so far, but can we ever lose it? Yes we can! Pay attention to platitudes, steer clear of slogans, and vote with your head, not your heart.

. Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com