Think about every class election you ever saw in school. Did anyone run because they wanted to represent the student body and make sure that their interests were served? Did they genuinely believe that they had a unique and crucial ability to perform this task better than any of their competitors? Of course not. They ran because they were ambitious. They wanted to be popular, or to improve their college application, or make sure the prom could be how they wanted it to be, or whatever other benefits they'd reap. So they said things that they thought people would want to hear.
National elections are the same way, except the ones running are the most ambitious from a group of 300,000,000 instead of a group of 300. By my math that makes them a million times more ambitious. And they aren't competing to see who gets to pick the time of the pep rally; they're trying be the general manager of the largest empire, equipped with the most lethal machinery, in the history of civilization. To even get anywhere close to a position where they have even the slightest shot at running for president, they had to have contorted, conspired, compromised, cheated, lied, backtracked, betrayed, bought off, threatened, punished, and perverted themselves in ways I can't even imagine. And then repeated all of that again after breakfast until lunch. And then again until dinner, and after dinner until bed. And then keep it up continually over several decades. These are the kinds of people I'm supposed to support with my vote?
Time magazine published this article by Michael Kinsley, which A Tiny Revolution highlighted, that draws attention to this problem.
[V]oters are also right to feel that something is phony about democratic politics and that it's getting worse. Even a candidate who agrees with you on all important issues and always has—no dreaded flip-flops—is forced by the conventions of politics to be disingenuous about at least one core issue: why he or she is running.Like most installments in this series, the ambition issue doesn't stand on its own as a make-or-break point in opposition of voting. It basically just falls into what will probably be a common category: why every candidate sucks. I'm extremely reluctant to support candidates who suck. The most viciously ambitious people usually suck a whole lot, and our system is designed to filter only the most supremely viciously ambitious people into contention for national office.Ladies and gentlemen, they are running because they are ambitious. No, really, they are. You probably suspected as much. And yet you would abandon any candidate who dared to admit this, or at least they all believe that you would...[T]he purest form of ambition is political ambition, because it represents a desire to rule over other people.
When you hear the presidential candidates carrying on about democracy and freedom, do you ever wonder what they would be saying if they had been born into societies with different values? What if Mitt Romney had come to adulthood in Nazi Germany? What if Hillary Clinton had gone to Moscow State University and married a promising young apparatchik? What if Barack Obama had been born in Kenya, like his father, where even now people are slaughtering one another over a crooked election? Which of them would be the courageous dissidents, risking their lives for the values they talk about freely—in every sense—on the campaign trail? And which would be playing the universal human power game under the local rules, whatever they happened to be?
Without naming names, I believe that most of them would be playing the game. What motivates most politicians, especially those running for President, is closer to your classic will-to-power than to a deep desire to reform the health-care system.
7 comments:
I take issue, as president of my medical school class, with your assumption that every class officer candidate runs on ambition. There may be some benefits to me holding my position, but there are plenty of sacrifices I've made to reap those (minor) benefits, and I certainly don't think I'm the only one who could have done my job or that the sacrifices were worth it for the benefits. I sincerely do work to make sure the students' interests are served, and I can give you examples if you like. This is definitely different than being president of my high school class and planning prom (which I was and did, but prom planning ended up being an extra perk, not a reason I ran), since I do actual work on behalf of my constituents. Ambition? Sure. But I would argue that everyone has ambition. If the goal is to look good on college apps, some people are ambitious via student government, others volunteer a million hours a month to pad their applications. So is ambition in itself bad? I don't think so. Is the desire to rule the world bad? I think that's what you're getting at, and I don't disagree completely.
I definitely don't disagree with the fact that to become president of the U.S. you need to sell your soul to various entities, which isn't a good thing, and I understand where you're coming from with not wanting to vote for someone like that.
I just had to defend myself as a career class election winner.
I also should confess that it is a secret ambition of mine to someday become president of the United States. Likely to happen? Probably not. Maybe mayor of a small town, though.
What I said certainly doesn't apply to every single class election. It is just using a familiar example to illustrate point. I don't doubt that there are some sincere people, especially at lower levels.
Everyone might have ambition, but ambition to what? When that ambition is to power and control... it gets a little scary. When it is ambition to the power of the US presidency? Beyond scary.
I think it was Woody Allen who quipped, "I would never join a club that would have me as a member!" Reading between the lines it seems like you are saying that anyone who WANTS to be President is, by definition, unqualified to be President.
The scenario you described of the reluctant leader being talked into taking on a leadership role works well at a local level, in fact that's how some good politicians get started. But not all those talked into a leadership role turn out to be good at it, and I sure wouldn't want to take that chance at the higher levels of government.
The problem I have with your use of ambition to disqualify someone is that ambition doesn't have to be a bad thing. We've both known people who were so ambitious to get what they wanted that they lied, cheated, and backstabbed to get it. That's bad ambition.
On the other hand, wouldn't you agree that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be the best at something and working hard to achieve it? Consider someone who loves tennis and wants to be the best tennis player in the world. They practice and practice and work their way up year after year until they achieve it. Most of us would find that admirable, and I think all would call that drive to excel ambition.
I see ambition as the motor that drives people to achieve their goals.
I agree that ambition in and of itself isn't necessarily bad. A point that I could have made more clearly it that the bad thing is the particular ambition of wanting to be the imperial manager. The pure pursuit of status and power and domination and control, and the necessary deceit, corruption, and everything else that goes with it, all of that is what disqualifies them.
I should also make clear that I don't want the reluctant leader scenario at higher levels of government, because I don't want higher levels of government at all. But I find it curious that you'd say you wouldn't want to "take a chance" on a reluctant leader at a national level. You at least have a chance with the reluctant person! With the ambitious power-seeker you know you won't get anything good.
(And actually the comparison to tennis is interesting, because I do think there might be something a little wrong with single-mindedly pursuing perfection at a game. That might be a whole other issue, or maybe it is somewhat related. Not sure.)
Shaving is a symbol of self-castration, and I'll have nothing to do with it.
What Would Lincoln Do?
Let's focus on the goal and the means to achieve it. Personally desiring and striving to be the best tennis player is one thing, wanting be President (or Vice-President) so you can invade and occupy Middle Eastern countries, bad. Practicing every day and studying tennis techniques to improve your game, admirable. Working with partisan smear groups to destroy your political opponents, despicable.
However, those two examples are extremes. What about a politician who believes he is uniquely qualified to begin to heal our nation's racial divisions and get our citizens to understand that we are a nation of people, not a nation of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Others? What if he or she wants to be President, not for personal gain or to reward corporate friends, but to move America forward? Let's say such a gifted person is also a strong liberal on most issues. Can such a person be elected President without some compromise? No. Can such a person lead the nation as President by only signing bills that he or she personally believe in? No. Our present administration has done just that, running the country as though the only Americans that matter are Republicans and it's been a disaster.
To be an effective President, you must listen and respect all people, liberals, conservatives, libertarians, progressives, and those in the middle. That would be very hard for me to do. I'd be a lousy President. But if you accept the premise that a country or society needs a leader, then that leader can never meet your purity standard. Never.
So maybe the real question is, has the United States become too big, too rich, too arrogant, too militarily powerful to be effectively governed? I don't know. It looks like we are a county that is clearly out of control. I suspect what we need, at a minimum, is some other superpowers in the world to challenge us and keep us humble and in check. People like Bush and Cheney know there are no other nations that can effectively challenge us, and they and the neo-cons are going for the gold: eventual world domination, where we call all the shots, where we make the rules and define what freedom looks like, what religion is acceptable, what rights the people are allowed to have and which should be denied, and what the press gets to print and what is off limits. They have to do it now before the Chinese and Indians reach near parity. The Europeans could challenge us now but they haven't caught on yet to just how dangerous and demented our political right is.
"What about a politician who believes he is uniquely qualified to begin to heal our nation's racial divisions and get our citizens to understand that we are a nation of people, not a nation of whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Others? What if he or she wants to be President, not for personal gain or to reward corporate friends, but to move America forward? Let's say such a gifted person is also a strong liberal on most issues."
First, I hope you're not talking about Obama. Second, meaningful changes in an area like racial healing isn't imposed from the top down. Good leaders can be a part of it, but they can't force it on an unwilling population. And good leaders don't start by lying about crucial issues, as every Presidential candidate (including Obama) has done.
"So maybe the real question is, has the United States become too big, too rich, too arrogant, too militarily powerful to be effectively governed?"
Yes. My elaboration will probably be the next installment in this series.
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