Two Curtain Calls

When Jean-Claude Duvalier, Pres-ident-for-Life of Haiti, and Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, left the world stage within a few weeks of each other, they bowed out to very different reviews. The revolution that toppled Duvalier was universally acclaimed. Palme’s departure, on the other hand, was greeted with dismay and sorrow—not only because the manner of his leave-taking (murder) was so vile, but because his career had been so virtuous.

The regimes of the two men—the hyper-modern welfare state, and the primitive dictatorship—showed equally striking contrasts. But neither the differences in their curtain calls nor the differences in their countries could obscure certain formal resemblances. The priggish technocrat and the playboy thug had quite a bit in common.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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When Jean-Claude Duvalier, Pres-ident-for-Life of Haiti, and Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden, left the world stage within a few weeks of each other, they bowed out to very different reviews. The revolution that toppled Duvalier was universally acclaimed. Palme’s departure, on the other hand, was greeted with dismay and sorrow—not only because the manner of his leave-taking (murder) was so vile, but because his career had been so virtuous.

The regimes of the two men—the hyper-modern welfare state, and the primitive dictatorship—showed equally striking contrasts. But neither the differences in their curtain calls nor the differences in their countries could obscure certain formal resemblances. The priggish technocrat and the playboy thug had quite a bit in common.