Mr. White, who in the 1920s founded L.N. White & Co., the import-export firm where my father became a principal, had a photo on his desk of a distinguished-looking gentleman. I assumed it was Mr. White’s father, but when I said so, my father was taken aback. “Bernard Baruch,” he said. The financier and statesman had long known White’s family on Long Island. The founder’s wife, Mary, as a young woman practiced driving in one of Baruch’s cars—and crashed it. When informed, Baruch sternly said, “Mary, there’s only one thing to do in a situation like this,” and turned on his heel. She followed him into the barn, not knowing what consequences she faced. There, Baruch handed her the keys to another car so she could try again.
That story was relayed by the late David White, the founder’s son, who started and ran the company’s frozen-seafood division while my father and colleagues continued the bean business. Baruch comes to mind now because I was looking through The Last Lion trilogy, William Manchester’s classic biography of Winston Churchill, of which the third book was completed by Paul Reid after Manchester’s death. I sought Manchester’s discussion of “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric,” an unpublished 1897 essay by Churchill, but happened across mentions of Churchill’s friendship with Baruch, which included the latter shielding him from the worst of Wall Street’s 1929 Crash.
That day, Churchill dropped in on Baruch’s office and got caught up in trading, losing disastrously. Churchill, in Manchester’s words, was a “born losing gambler,” ill-suited for the stock market or a casino. At day’s end, Churchill came to Baruch in tears, saying his political career was over as he’d now have to go into business to pay his debts. “The financier gently corrected him,” Manchester wrote. “Churchill, he said, had lost nothing. Baruch had left instructions to buy every time Churchill sold and sell whenever Churchill bought.” Churchill had come out even, later learning Baruch covered the commissions.
Churchill wrote “The Scaffolding of Rhetoric” as a 23-year-old cavalry officer in India. It opens: “Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. He is an independent force in the world. Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable.”
Manchester evoked that essay in recounting Churchill’s 1930s sojourn in the political wilderness, when he (like Baruch) opposed British efforts to appease Nazi Germany, spearheaded by his own Conservative Party and the governments of Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Referring to a contretemps in the House of Commons over the Baldwin government’s failure to build up the Royal Air Force, Manchester wrote: “Now, nearly forty years later, abandoned by his party, betrayed by friends, and stripped of office, Churchill himself had grasped and mastered rhetorical skills, and in the RAF debate of 1936 his range, force, and depth held the House rapt and brought Stanley Baldwin to his knees.”
I looked that up while thinking about Mitt Romney, who’s similarly been “abandoned by his party,” losing friends and power. “I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,” Romney stated recently, coyly adding that he’d let the public do the “very difficult calculation of what that would mean” for his vote in 2024. He declined to endorse Kamala Harris, or any third-party candidate, or say that he wouldn’t vote, though his “calculation” wording seems suggestive of a Harris vote. Romney defended this vagueness as maintaining ability to have an impact on the GOP’s future: “I believe I will have more influence in the party by virtue of saying it as I’ve said it.”
Romney reminds me of Baruch: wealthy, sensible, level-headed; I can imagine Romney benevolently covering someone’s stock trades or handing another set of keys to a struggling driving student. But it’s Churchill that Romney should be emulating now—stubborn, defiant, blunt, “an independent force in the world.” The only way Romney can have any influence in the future worth having, inside or outside the Republican Party, is by putting aside word games and stating clearly whom he’s voting for and why.
—Follow Kenneth Silber on X: @kennethsilber
