Groaning Our Way to the Polls

Many of you spent a lot of time groaning this past summer. I know this because I too watched the party conventions, those time-honored events where politics meets burlesque and campaigns tell their tallest tales to prove that their man for the job is none other than Captain America himself. In this election, however, with the self-admitted character failure of our own current President, this tradition has been driven to Paul Bunyanesque proportions, making for a political season that has focused more than ever on who the candidates are (and less than ever on what they will do).

In one sense, the trend provides an interesting riff on a chord that theorists of democracy have long been playing, one that dates back to none other than Socrates. In the Republic, Socrates describes for his companions what he terms the Democratic Man, a figure who panders shamelessly to public whim and so wins its approval. To my mind, what is distinct about our American democracy is not that we have these Democratic Men--for we have legions of them--rather it is that thing to which our Democratic Men (and Women) so often pander, namely, our hunger for a great leader.

Raised as we are on the legends of Honest Abe and the implacable T.R., we are taught to revere, above all else, the character of our leaders. Indeed, character is that thing which we most want them to give us. Our would-be leaders, in turn, do not tend to make promises so much of bread but of brilliance, bravado, and derring-do. They, in short, don't promise anything as much as they promise themselves.

Recently, however, that promise of character has become more explicit. Indeed, there seems far more talk of actions that might ensue based upon the strength of a candidate's character than of prior actions that imply them. Boasting of one's character has become the sine qua non of American political campaigns, in part because the President has provided a stunning example of one with all the makings of greatness who has been undone by a fatal flaw, his character.

And so, in order to appear before the American public as the moral doppelganger of the President, which is to say convince the voters that one has all of the vast personal and intellectual talent of a man like President Clinton while being 180 degrees his ethical opposite, candidates seem ever on the verge of breaking their arms to pat themselves on the back for their moral superiority. Indeed, at times, I think that if I listen to one more candidate serenade the American public with another self-congratulatory song of self-righteousness that I will be moved to scream rather than groan. But this is for reasons that are different than you might think.

I actually expect American politicians to be great leaders. I want men and women who we not only generally like, but who we also respect and even revere--leaders whose lives do seem worthy to us of emulation and of whom we might make examples for our children. I want, in short, leaders whom we are happy to praise. And yet, it should be we who praise them--not the leaders (or, in this case, the candidates) who take on that responsibility for us.

Such habits, in a sense, are honest. We know, for a documented fact, just what (and how much) a politician thinks of him or herself. But it is a brand of honesty that is terribly undignified, one that to me is most familiar in President Clinton's own constant musing about the fate that history will assign him.

To be sure, I am not so naive to think that there isn't a single President who has not spent many an hour sitting in the Oval Office contemplating the words that historians will use to describe him. And as with ambition, when such thoughts are yoked to good intentions and honest desires for the country, we have seen some of the greatest successes of which history has to speak. And yet there is an unmistakable crassness to a President giving a very public voice to such musings, for, whether rightly or wrongly, they belie the stated focus of the office. The President's concern for the destiny of the Republic seems only to be of importance to him in so far as it seals his own fate.

It is true that the ambitions that undoubtedly stir such musings in the President are to be found in most any politician--or most any person, for that matter--who has ever hoped to be a great leader. But those with such lofty aspirations ought to be more careful. Naked ambition is an untamed horse. Train it well, and it will get you to your destination; give it free rein, however, and it will only get you into trouble.

Most importantly, though, if it gets you where you want to go, never tell anyone it was responsible for your success.

John Paul Rollert '00-'01 is a social studies concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.