Should we expect our political leaders to be great and good?

 

I am writing this during an election campaign in Australia. By international standards, both chief contenders for public office could be aptly described as neither conspicuously great nor notoriously bad.

However, over the last three years, Australians have experienced the worst government that I can remember. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the political alternative on offer would have been much better.

During the current election campaign, both chief contenders for national leadership have seemed oblivious to the decline in productivity growth that caused the good times to stop rolling on in this country. It has apparently not registered with them that vote-buying spending proposals are less appropriate under such circumstances than economic reforms to restore productivity growth. Moreover, the election campaign is being conducted as though nothing that has happened recently in the international economic and political environment might require Australians to prepare for difficult times ahead.

Fortunately, the question that I have posed above does not require me to consider which of the contenders for national leadership is most worthy of being prime minister of Australia.

Before I go any further, however, I should outline my (somewhat complicated) view of party politics in liberal democracies. I have yet to see a system of government that is better than the two-party system at enabling voters to hold governments accountable for their actions. One of the downsides of that system, however, is that it provides a strong incentive for political parties to reward team players who are willing to set aside their own views to support a party line. The insincerity that is often on display in the public performance of politicians makes it is difficult to avoid regarding politics as a disreputable profession. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that democratic political systems sometimes produce leaders who are highly principled and effective in enhancing opportunities for human flourishing.  

Should we expect our political leaders to be great and good? That question has arisen from previous research that I have undertaken about the roles of culture, ideology, and political entrepreneurship as factors influencing levels of economic and personal freedom in different countries. I will briefly outline some points emerging from that research before discussing Robert Faulkner’s book, The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and its Critics (2007).

Points emerging from previous research

• Cultural values do not fully explain levels of economic and personal freedom in different countries. Suppression of liberty in countries with relatively low levels of economic and personal freedom, e.g. China, Iran and Venezuela, is a product of the ideologies of the governments concerned rather than the cultural values of the peoples. Similarly, a substantial number of countries with relatively high personal and economic freedom are performing better in that regard than can readily be explained on the basis of prevailing cultural values.
• It is not difficult to identify political entrepreneurs who have historically been major players determining outcomes in many jurisdictions where economic and personal freedom seems substantially at variance with underlying cultural values. There are good reasons for that. Media coverage tends to focus on political leaders, the challenges they face and the policies they adopt.
• Douglas North saw political entrepreneurship as being required to overcome high transactions costs involved in changing institutions – the rules of the game of society. There are high transactions costs associated with institutional change because institutions are path dependent, e.g. embedded in culture.
• Political entrepreneurship takes place within culture and is concerned with interpreting and influencing culture as well as formal rules (constitutions, laws and regulations). Some research suggests that successful political entrepreneurs tend to advance their ambitions by focusing on niches in the marketplace of ideas that established parties do not satisfy. They win support by emphasizing the problem-solving capacities of their ideas.
• Max Weber argued that charismatic and demagogic leadership may be required to overcome the impersonal forces of bureaucratization within democracies. Demagogic leaders are responsible for their cause, and thus capable of intentionally and rationally directing state power towards its achievement.  
• Weber suggested that demagogic leadership can be consistent with democracy, but he seems to have left aside the question of whether a demagogic leader can be both good and great.

The essays from which those points were abstracted can be found here and here.

 The Case for Greatness

 In making the case for greatness Robert Faulkner observes that thoughtful citizens and appreciative historians have no difficulty in acknowledging the greatness of people like George Washington, Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela. By contrast, many of those who generalize about human affairs display a doubting cynicism about such greatness. He notes that “social scientists speak much of rational maximizing, power seeking, self-interest, and popular voice, but not much of extraordinary judiciousness, honorable aims, and knowing justice” and that “influential professors of philosophy and literature talk confidently of autonomy and equal dignity, while deprecating ambition for office and accomplishment as elitist domineering or a remnant of repressive culture”.

The author’s key contention is that the accounts of political greatness by Aristotle, Plato, and Xenophon “illuminate our experiences of a Mandela or a Margaret Thatcher far better than the critical and doctrinal theorizing that is more familiar and has been in the works for three or four centuries”.

 The book begins by considering Aristotle’s account of an honorable and just form of grand ambition. It then considers the political dangers and psychological dynamics of the less bounded and less just forms of ambition, using Alcibiades and Cyrus as examples of individuals who seek to rule empires. That is followed by a chapter discussing George Washington as an example of a gentleman-statesman. Along the way, the author notes the role of Niccolo Machiavelli in turning the orientation of much thinking about human affairs from what men should do “from duty and the best life” to what men do to advance themselves and their followers in wealth and power. The final chapters discuss modern theories that obscure the moral-political phenomenon of political greatness and make it “peculiarly alien to our apprehension and sensibilities”. One of the final chapters is devoted to discussion of the egalitarian theories of John Rawls and Hannah Arendt. The other discusses the theories of Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche.

In what follows, I focus mainly on what the author has to say about Aristotle. Readers who are looking for a more comprehensive summary of The Case for Greatness should read the review by Paul A. Rahe.

Faulkner observes that Aristotle ranks greatness of soul as the "crown" needed to perfect all the virtues, including justice. He writes:

 “Aristotle does not mince words on this topic, and neither should we. No greatness without goodness, yes, but also no true goodness without greatness. The great-souled human being, in claiming a worthy stage, claims for human excellence the prominence and tasks it deserves. Accordingly, while greatness of soul "cannot exist without" such other virtues as moderation and justice, it also "enhances their goodness." A man of such virtue is too noble to stoop, or to accept the second best, especially in his own conduct. Aristotle calls greatness of soul a kosmos. It is an ornament of good character that is also an exalting order: an ordering heightened by an awareness of the grand activities such a soul calls for and is owed.”

Aristotle views the great-souled man as having a disposition to claim great honours because he considers himself worthy of them. The great-souled man has a true estimate of his own worth. He claims tasks that no-one else can do, or do as well. The great-souled man disdains the offices commonly sought by other ambitious people; he seeks the tribute and high offices that are “great things.

Aristotle equates greatness of the soul with magnanimity - which he also equates with excellence and justice. However, the great-souled man’s disposition is complicated because he seeks great positions and honours from others as well as virtue of soul for himself. Aristotle suggests that the great-souled man holds that nothing is greater than his own virtue and seems to regard any honour as less than what is due a soul of such worth.

The great-souled man’s desire for superiority may harbour a despotic impulse, but his virtue gives this impulse something of an honorable and just direction. Faulkner writes:

“It is the priority of virtue and honor, so understood, that largely distinguishes Aristotelian greatness of soul and a Washington.”

Later, he explains more fully:

“Knowledge of his virtue helps uphold the great man amidst changing fortune. Unlike Machiavelli's great man, his measure is not ambitious mastery of fortune, but living well amidst fortune's gifts and trials. It is after this purification of grand ambition that Aristotle sharply separates true pride from the all-too-common arrogance of the privileged. "In truth," "rightly," "justly," only the good should be honored.”

Faulkner concludes:

“Aristotle's diagnosis comes to this: the great-souled man is at once drawn above humanity and drawn to humanity. He exhibits his superiority by aiding his fellows, and yet his wish is less to aid them than to avoid being or appearing dependent on them.”

Faulkner suggests that while Nicomachean Ethics seems to imply that greatness of the soul is a desirable attribute of political leaders, Aristotle moderates that view in the Politics and Ethics. In Politics, he doesn’t forget the best man’s claims but presents them “only after defending at length the more common and political claimants to rule”. At one point he even praises “the decent and equitable man” over the great man. In Ethics, Aristotle suggests that greatness, especially great power, is overrated: “it is possible for one who is not a ruler of land and sea to perform noble action.”

Faulkner writes:

“Given the likelihood of war, the difficulties of preserving any regime, and the extreme rarity of the best regime, there will be opportunities enough for noble deeds, great things, and superiority over others. A great-souled man will have his opportunities; he will be often needed. But such a force, if a blind force, may also harm itself and those whom it would rule, including the most thoughtful. Whatever else Aristotle's Ethics and Politics may be, whatever the defects, his is surely a model effort to supply comprehensive light to the grandly ambitious and to those who depend on them.”

Faulkner ends his book with a discussion of Nietzsche, who “unlike Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, and Kant, trumpets an animus against ordinary people”. Faulkner’s final comment:

“Nietzsche's proposals and diagnoses alike invite us to look to more moderate accounts, whether in examples such as a Washington or in the historians and philosophers who took seriously what is good and true as well as what is strong and great. To encourage such looking is what this book is about.”

My assessment

I think Robert Faulkner has made a stronger case for goodness than greatness as a desirable attribute in political leaders. Greatness is required in times of crisis, but competence will suffice most of the time. It is important to recognize, however, that winning an election doesn’t make a person competent in dealing with public policy issues. People can acquire skills relevant to statecraft in a variety of different ways but, as in other professions, on-the-job experience seems indispensable to high-level performance.

The case that Faulkner makes for goodness leads to the question of what we mean by goodness as applied to political leaders. As I see it, there are two different aspects to this question.

The first concerns personal ethics. Should citizens expect the holders of high office in a democracy to conform to widely accepted norms of ethical behaviour? If we expect our sporting heroes to confirm to such norms in their off-field behavior, there is perhaps an even stronger case for the similar standards to be applied to politicians. Since politicians regularly ask voters to trust them to implement policies, it seems appropriate for voters to expect them to demonstrate trustworthiness in their personal behavior. (Of course, the personal ethics of candidates is only one of the matters that voters should consider, and other matters may well be more important in particular instances.)

The second aspect concerns confusion of soulcraft and statecraft. Soulcraft, the means by which individuals flourish and find fulfillment in life, is a matter that is best left for individuals to pursue in the manner they choose for themselves. Since self-direction is fundamental to individual flourishing, it is a mistake to believe that it can be advanced via government action to promote particular views of moral excellence. Aristotle may have had reason to believe that was possible in a polis in the ancient world, but it is certainly not possible in modern societies which are characterised by much greater diversity of cultural and religious influences.

Some Neo-Aristotelian philosophers have drawn a clear distinction between soulcraft and statecraft. In their book Norms of Liberty, Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl imply that the main role of statecraft is to restore or construct a political/ legal order in which “it might be possible for different individuals to flourish and to do so in different ways (in different communities and cultures) without creating inherent ethical conflict in the overall structure of their social/ political context.” (p 83)

In my view, we should judge our political leaders to be very good if they can manage to move the political/legal order toward achieving that outcome.