Leadership in Democracies

The conventional wisdom is that we would be better off if politically powerful leaders were less mediocre. Instead, my view is that we would be better off if mediocre political leaders were less powerful....The Leadership Myth, Arnold Kling, TCSDaily.com, 10/24/2006

Generations miss this time and again. Boomers missed this in the late 1960's when, pursuing the charismatic excellence of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, they found themselves with Richard Nixon after Senator Kennedy was assassinated and Senator McCarthy vanished to another planet. Nixon, to the rage of liberals ever since, was pretty effective. He ended a war that the Democrats had started; he aligned the U.S. with China, to the chagrin of the USSR; and, almost unnoted then and ever since, he instigated the Department of Justice to do what it had failed to do under Lyndon Johnson, integrate American public schools. But, Nixon, rarely if ever described as anything but a mediocrity by commentators of the time, also did what Kling warns is still the primary issue in democracy: he overstepped; he attempted to take powers which were not his to wield. Though it is historic fact that both of his immediate predecessors had done the same thing, Nixon was the first Chief Executive to pay the price. He was forced out of office. Setting the various mythologies about this event aside, which include some so grandiose as to suggest Nixon was the Devil, and some so bizarre (though interesting) as to suggest that the Watergate process was a kind of public burning (see Robert Coover), the wary regard reserved for Nixon should be reserved for all politicians. Why? With very few exceptions in the entire history of the Republic, most politicians have been mediocrities. Sadly, a great portion of those politicians have had one area of excellence: their will to power. Democracy is not just about choosing one person over another for an office; democracy is also about making sure that will to power doesn't get out of hand, that politicians don't take a brief electoral mandate as an excuse to overturn the Constitution and the precedents established from it. And, in those rare instances where we pick a real star, a Lincoln or an FDR, we have to be even more vigilant because, as sure as death and taxes, a politician who thinks his or her personal charisma is sufficient to permit violation of the law will go right ahead and do it. Read Kling's fine essay in full.

Another thought for the election....

Luther