Believing


Belief may be the defining trait of our greatest leaders and our greatest flops
Joseph Epstein gives a fascinating take on American Presidents and possible 2008 candidates.

Testing the likely 2008 presidential candidates for belief is an interesting exercise. One of the worrisome things about Hillary Rodham Clinton is that it isn't entirely clear whether she is a true believer or just another standard politician, whose only question is how do I climb to the top of the greasy pole to the presidency. Since her election to the Senate, she has played artfully at being the standard pol. But is there, beneath the great senatorial platitudinarian, a woman who has deep beliefs about changing the country? Hillary the believer is much more frightening than Hillary the business-as-usual political hack.

Barack Obama seems, at this point, too callow to possess serious beliefs. He wants justice, he wants peace, he wants honor for the nation, he wants all good things for all people, and he wants these things without messy conflict. His brief but blazing senatorial career thus far has been devoted to demonstrating his charm and goodness. But wants, charm, self-proclaimed virtue are different from beliefs, and we cannot know in what he genuinely believes.

John McCain has the look and feel, not least the testiness, of a believer, but the question in his case is in what exactly does he believe, apart from his own integrity, which seems genuine. Or is he merely pugnacious (instead of wily) for the public good? Nobody knows, and one wonders if McCain himself knows in what, politically, he truly believes.

Belief is not a sine qua non in a president. At times the country does better with a politician whose aim goes little beyond keeping the ball in play, the game in motion. And where belief is detectable, the question of course is what is the content of the belief a candidate holds. If Churchill was a believer, so was Hitler.

Yet no great American president I can think of has not been a believer. The greatest of our presidents, perhaps the greatest American, Abraham Lincoln, was great precisely because of his deep, almost religious belief in the necessity of maintaining the Union and doing everything he could to keep it intact. Had they then existed, polls heavily in favor of his bringing the boys back home by stopping the Civil War would scarcely have dissuaded him.

Worth your time and thought.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sat - December 30, 2006 at 06:17 PM  Tag


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