#78: Statesmanship

August 29, 2010

There is a simplistic political theory lurking just below the surface of our current Left-wing punditry, and it goes something like this …

The most fundamental and powerful human drive is greed. Yes, there may well be, as Hume argued, “… some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom; some spark of friendship for human kind; some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent,” but even if there is, it is vastly overmatched by greed. And it is greed that equally fuels the passions of the two contending political poles of Left and Free Enterprise. On the Left, it is greed for the wealth of others, and on the Free Enterprise, it is greed for the retention and acquisition of personal wealth. It may be argued that one or the other is morally more defensible, but the bottom line is that of getting and retaining wealth, either others’ or one’s own.

This natural drive, together with innate inclinations to tribalism and the incitement of the mass media, inevitably polarize populations into positions more extreme and rigid than well serve the public good. Clearly, radical Socialism is a bust, but, equally, utterly unregulated Free Enterprise also leads to socially undesirable consequences. This poses an inevitable and unavoidable problem for the statesman.

A sincere statesman is motivated by the desire to improve the condition of his country. Yet, to the extent that this objective requires moderating the expectations of both populations in the electorate, it would seem that he must inevitably lose the support of the citizenry in general. In effect, the statesman who wants to do a good job is forced to alienate both of the contending populations under him.

The conclusion drawn from this story is that a president who fails to satisfy both of the factions in his country, does so only because he is attempting to act in the best interests of his country.

This is a false inference for at least two reasons.

The first one is this. While a president might well alienate both factions of the citizenry by selecting only what is best from both of their positions, rejecting what is bad, he equally might alienate them by selecting only what is worst in both of their positions, rejecting what is best.

A less consistent bad president might even rather randomly mix the bad with the good from both factions, revealing absolutely no clear objective to anyone and thereby still alienating the mass of voters.

The second one is this. The theory sketched above takes no account of the leadership expected of a president.

Of course, a president may have to take steps unpopular on one side or the other. This is a given. But the successful statesman is able to use the force of his personality and the force of his office to persuade his citizenry of the rightness of his actions. The ability of president to bring his citizenry along on his plans is the actual test of the statesman, not solely his ability to formulate a practical and prudent plan for his people.

The current president of the U.S. fails on both of the above counts. His unpopularity, contrary to the spin of liberal pundits, is not due to his having taken the best of both sides and rejected the worst. His unpopularity is rather due to his having been the “less consistent bad president,” the one who “randomly mixes the bad with the good from both factions, revealing absolutely no clear objective to anyone.”

But, in addition, he has also failed on the count of leadership. Having initiated policies and actions unpopular to both the fronts within the country, he has proven almost stunningly incompetent at persuading any contingent within the country that he is doing the right thing. The people are rapidly becoming convinced now that their situation is worse than they had imagined. They initially thought that they were badly led.

They are becoming convinced that they are not being led at all.