And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices – Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity – they’ve never really faced.
It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.
Obviously, it’s not fair to compare anybody to Lincoln, but he does illustrate the repertoire of skills we look for in a leader. The central illusion of modern politics is that if only people as virtuous as “us” had power, then things would be better. Candidates get elected by telling people what they want to hear, leading them by using the sugar of their own fantasies.
Somehow a leader conversant with his own failings wouldn’t be as affected by the moral self-approval that afflicts most political movements.
Some good thoughts about one of the weaknesses of our generation. The fond recollections of the nineteenth century may be a bit of an exaggeration, however. The change in attitude between 1850 and now might be related to the suffrage of women and 18 year olds.
Wasn’t it Lyndon Johnson who said that he didn’t want anybody working in the White House who hadn’t suffered and been defeated at some point in their lives?
“It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.”
And who fits the bill better than John McCain!
Oh, that politics today would allow a candidate who had suffered two major depressive episodes, was chronically depressed, and found ways to deal with it. A fascinating book on this aspect of Lincoln is Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.