Moral politicians and political morality…
The cynical readers of this blog will think I’m being cute here…oxymorons-squared to end the week, anyone? A more abstract question: Does a President have to be a moral person to be a good President? When we think back to some of the escapades our Commanders-in-Chief were embroiled in during the first hundred years or so of this country, it’s clear to me there’s not a high degree of correlation between moral behavior and leadership skill. I’m not just talking about dalliances with women either.
When we get into the 20th century, especially the latter half, scurrilous behavior seems common in the Oval Office. Kennedy had his alleged affair with Ms. Monroe and rumor has it that Papa Joe bought the election for him by creating a coalition between the mob and the unions (see The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh)—maybe that’s why the mob was so pissed when Bobby started going after them.
Johnson helped create some of the most progressive legislation that this country has ever known but became bogged down in the immoral morass of nation building in Vietnam. Reagan had his little Contra problem and Nixon his little plumbing problem, yet the first beat down the USSR and the second opened up trade to China. Clinton had his Monica distraction but otherwise led the country through eight years of relative peace and prosperity. Carter was a saint and look where it got him.
Each president that I mentioned at least flirted with greatness. In Carter and Clinton’s cases, their greatest deeds came after their presidency. All but Carter cover the spectrum from morally ambiguous to outright criminal (in the case of Nixon). My contention is that a morally ambiguous nature does not necessarily imply that a president can’t do great things or be a steady leader for the country.
Unfortunately, due to the puritanical history of our country and our overt and stultifying political correctness, we ask more moral behavior of our presidents and other leaders than we do ourselves. Gary Hart, for example, might have been a fine Commander-in-Chief. Instead, we castrated him and tossed him on the garbage heap of history. What John Edwards did while his wife was dying of cancer yet still supporting him on the campaign trail was reprehensible, and illegal in his use of campaign funds to finance his philandering, but I can objectively ask myself, would he have been a better president than Dubya? Probably. We’ll never know.
Two of our steadfast allies in Europe, France and Italy, have leaders that would never cut it if they had to run the gauntlet of our puritanical political morality fanatics. Don Juan Berlusconi is such a lady’s man (and connoisseur of women who are not particularly lady-like) that he makes William Jefferson Clinton look like a saint. M. Sarkozy operated with more finesse but was also known for his womanizing—marriage seems to be good for him, but we’ll see. Both these leaders are lucky that secular hedonism is more popular in their countries than traditional Catholicism. In fact, Latin lovers from France to Italy and on to Central and South America often wonder what all the fuss is about in the U.S. Aren’t men who have risen to the top supposed to enjoy the fringe benefits?
I’m not condoning bad behavior. I abhor it, in fact. I call it the alpha male syndrome, that euphoric power trip where a human male can’t keep you know what in his pants. Or thinks he’s above the law. Or thinks he’s better than everyone else. Or all of the above. It might be a human evolutionary flaw left over from our tribal ancestors. Nevertheless, I’m wondering why we often tolerate it in normal society but expect our leaders to be above it.
With a philandering politician there are often no contradictions and no criminality like in the case of a Catholic priest molesting an altar boy or a fundamentalist preacher frequenting prostitutes…or a coach taking advantage of his position in a well-known university sports program to set up rape sessions with little boys. Pete the insurance agent who fools around with one of the company secretaries doesn’t even make the local news and might not even land in divorce court, but Pete the politician gets hammered.
So, what about Herman Cain? I find the former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza to be a buffoon with overly facile solutions for the country’s problems that either won’t work and/or harm the middle and poor classes. That said, do his dalliances when he was head of that restaurant organization imply that he’d be a bad president? No! They say nothing about his qualifications for the presidency. They do imply, if true, that he’s a sexist pig willing to take advantage of a leadership position to harass women. (The fact that Ms. Gloria Allred is representing pro bono one of the alleged victims also makes me suspicious, but I have a healthy distrust of anyone seeking media attention.) At any rate, we’ve had presidents like that before and some of them have done the country good in spite of their foibles.
I’d rather have a smart, progressive person in the White House who can maneuver around an increasingly inept Congress in order to move this country along to where it should be. Those priorities have no relation to perceived grievances from years ago (why are these women coming forward now if not at the request of the other Republican nominees or the Democrats?). For me, Herman Cain’s run for the nomination should depend on his policies and their resonance with the Republican voters. Moreover, if he wins the nomination, his run for the office of President of the United States should depend on his policies and their resonance with the larger electorate.
We have many things to learn from Europe. One is to put our Puritan heritage on the scrap heap of American society and strive for a secular government where our leaders are not pilloried for their dalliances or perceived minor lapses in morality. (The word “perceived” is key here because one person’s moral lapse can be ignored by another.) There are a few cases where we have risen above that. Mr. Frank in Massachusetts is one such case—not because he’s gay, but because of a scandal associated with one of his partners a few years back. (Ironically, his state is the ancient home of Puritanism and the Salem witch trials so aptly portrayed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.) There are many GOP members in government who hate Mr. Frank but I think that’s more for his essential contribution to the Dodd-Frank bill that will reign in Wall Street—if it ever gets any teeth. (Of course, the religious right would like to treat him like those Salem witches because he’s gay, but they’ll just have to learn to live with their frustrations.)
During many of my years in Colombia, I enjoyed the friendship of a French mathematical physicist. While I was a true immigrant to the country, he had opted to go to Colombia through a program the French have where you can either be drafted into the military or serve overseas in programs akin to those of our Peace Corps–the latter was his choice. During one discussion about the dalliances of some politician in the U.S. (I can’t remember who it was) where I was criticizing the morality of this politician, my friend said to me, “Oh, grow up! When are you whining gringo moralists going to get your priorities straight?”
His is a good question. With the passing of the years, I think it gets better, like a fine wine. Now, more than ever, I think the answer is that we have many more pressing problems to worry about than whether Herman Cain—or any other politician, for that matter—has strayed from the straight and narrow in his personal life. It’s time to grow up and reach political maturity. This includes the media that so far has lost all credibility as it focuses on news fit for the scandal pages at the supermarket checkout counter instead of the problems we really need to solve. I just shake my head and wonder about the excessive coverage of Ms. Lohan’s drunkenness, Ms. Kardashian’s marriage, and Mr. Cain’s dalliances. These cases and others take valuable time away from the true issues of the day. They are at best titillating examples of raw meat for gossip mongers.
And so it goes…
