As
these conversations
take place, Lee is turning 86 and though I am younger, both of us are faced
with the reality that our lives are comprised of many more yesterdays
than tomorrows.
The man is certainly not politically un-self-aware. In 1990,
after 31 years as prime minister, he moved gracefully out of the prime
minister’s office to make way for a successor (Goh Chok Tong, who held the job
for 14 years before giving way to Lee’s son). Lee is proud of that, rightly so.
Historical giants like Nehru of India and Mao of China stayed in power too long
and gummed
up the succession process and their country’s prospects big time.
This was not to be the Singapore way, not Lee’s way. But while sidelining himself, he has been anything but sidelined from power. He still attends cabinet meetings regularly. Surely he enjoys more influence over Singapore’s direction than Carter, Clinton and the two Bushes over America’s on their best days put together.
We talk about aging gracefully: “I loved your recent speech on aging, by the way. You said, keep on working and don’t retire. I love it, one of your best speeches.”
“No, once you stop working you are done for.”
A small joke: “I have this joke-theory, Minister Mentor. It’s about people who retire. Did you know that there’s a high correlation between retirement and death? Also, that there is a high correlation between playing golf too much and death? Golf is a killer.”
Somehow he laughed. LKY has of course been coughing on and off and working the heat pads regularly. He still seems uncomfortable but soldiers on; now, however, laughter overcomes the cough like a wave of defiance and his dark eyes seem reignited with life: “[Laughing] No, no, I do not believe in that. It is just that I have been doing this work [of governance] all my life. If I stopped it, the stimuli is gone, I’ll just fade away.”
It is explained to him that a certain Los Angeles-based journalist is often—too often—asked: “When are you going to stop writing your stupid columns?” And the response always is: “When stupid newspapers stop stupidly publishing them.”
Lee laughs again.
I keep going; I am on a roll (for me): “As long as they publish, then I am going to write them. Why stop? But it’s difficult not to miss a step or two as time goes by.”
Lee nods, confiding that staying in close touch with the people of Singapore gets very hard with age: “As I told them in cabinet, as prime minister, I was physically active in going around meeting people. I don’t have to ask for feedback on what the mood is. I go about on my own and I make decisions based on how I have read the vibes.
“Now, I seldom meet many people in the old way. I make half-a-dozen meetings a year when I go down to my constituency. I used to go to every new town to see how their successful children were setting up homes separate from their parents, what they were doing, how they decorate their homes, how they improve their lifestyles, what they have in the refrigerator, and so on. Now, I don’t do as frequently.
“Occasionally, I visit my constituency. So, I said to my colleagues, look, I have lost touch with the ground and I get my info from reading, seeing videos, TV and mining their impressions. When Jean Monnet became old and could not travel around Europe, he stayed in close touch with people who did, and he would mine their information. That is what I am doing. But the info is second-hand. I used to go by my gut feeling. Now it is based on what I have read, seen and heard, but not directly experienced.”
Time-out for an historical note: Monnet (1888–1979), as students of modern European history know, was the post-World War I prophet of European unity. A gigantically important statesman, the famous French economist, in both word and deed, campaigned for a sense of common purpose and mutual interest among the fractured and oft-warring states of Europe. His intellectual and political leadership helped pave the way for the Common Market in Europe and, by logical extension, today’s European Union.
That LKY would invoke the master Monnet in this or any other context tells you where his head is. You may perhaps suggest it is in the clouds—fine. But on the other hand it sure isn’t lollygagging about in the bottom of the prestige barrel. For the leader of a small country, Lee thinks big, and Singapore has been his oyster.
Me saying: “But don’t you actually miss that, or do you say, oh, I had more than enough of that getting out and about, thank God, it’s over.”
“Yes, but I haven’t got the physical energy to do what I did.
My physio [physiotherapy] just now took two hours. Because of aging, you lose
touch when you are unable to meet people face-to-face.
I had a better ‘feel’ of people when I was active and meeting people across all
levels of society.”
I say: “I know. One time I interviewed you, this was in 2005, and I think you were just turning 80, and the first thing I said to you was how were you feeling and you said, I am feeling good, but Tom, when you turn 80, that’s a tough number.”
Lee remembers and nods vigorously: “That’s right, now I am almost 86. So, what is my purpose now in life? To use my experience and my international network to widen Singapore’s space. I have friends who are leaders in America, Europe, Japan, China and India who date back to the 1960s.”
It’s the old saying: live long enough and eventually you get to know just about everybody. That accumulated knowledge and experience makes Lee into something of an international resource. An aging man can become hopelessly useless and debilitated with too much aging. Aging can render a once-fine wine sour, making it fit for nothing but the cask of condemned anonymity. But not this Chinese gentleman, not at least yet. For LKY, hobnobbing with the world’s political and economic elite is not just a personal ego trip, though it is that, too. He is a roving resource of well-considered ideas and perspectives, a Chinese Master, valuable to us even when he is wrong, which he can be, as can we all.
When he met for 45 minutes last fall with Barack Hussein Obama prior to the latter’s first trip to the Chinese mainland as president of the United States, it wasn’t just a courtesy call. The American president wanted to know the thoughts of the Singapore legend concerning China.
In that regard, Obama was following in the tradition of his predecessors, going back to Richard M. Nixon. And, knowing Lee’s ways, the young Obama received an earful. On the question and riddle of China, few world leaders have had more to say … and indeed, have said it!
“…I am almost 86. So, what is my purpose now in life? To use my experience and my international network to widen Singapore’s space.”
Some critics think LKY has too many opinions and shares them wantonly without even being asked. I don’t know about this. Perhaps father doesn’t always know best; but this is one father figure who knows a lot. They say in America that those who do, do; and those who can’t, teach. But he does both. He has the country to prove it.