When Presidents talk about getting on with the great tasks confronting America, it seems to be only foreign policy and war-making readiness that they have in mind.
These are big tasks, all right. But are they really the great tasks? Surely they are the routine tasks every Administration has had to see to since we became a superpower. It is the fate of superpowers to be the object of envy and dislike. Avoiding the bellicosity that results naturally from this condition is an inevitable task of their rulers, as is their duty to deal effectively with war when it cannot be helped.
The great tasks, however, have to do with perfecting the nation, and they are rarely, if ever, either exciting to read about in the newspapers or satisfying to the governing class’s appetite for drama and game play.
It is easy to see why Presidents since F.D.R. have preferred to dwell upon war and peace. They are, after all, grave themes. They are glamorous, exciting, dramatic themes. Men who deal in them seem more glamorous, exciting, dramatic than men who deal in, say, problems of agricultural production.
There are uniforms, flags, international travel with red carpets and reviewing the troops and toasting the mysterious Chinese. There are heavy bombardment, Paris peace talks, spies, beautiful maps on the wall with brightly colored pins in them, lovely headlines, brilliant audiences, heartbreakingly clean visits to the cemetery on bright patriotic days, occasionally moving speeches followed by taps.
Most important of all perhaps, they also present governing men with relatively simple problems. A President may enjoy an occasional success at peace or war, but at the really great tasks he can expect only despair.
We have been told constantly how complex and difficult the disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union have been, yet Presidents have had a mild success in them. By contrast, they have had no success at all in disarming dangerous Americans.
This is odd, for the question how heavily armed our households and pedestrians should be is surely pertinent to the truly great task of perfecting the nation. Shall we be a people as fully armed as we are now?
Merely raising this question makes politicians shudder, for hunters and sportsmen—a large part of us—are so fearful of statist limitations on their liberties that they may turn against any politician who is hesitant about total personal armament for everybody.
Not surprisingly, Presidents prefer to talk disarmament with Russians.
There is the question of how America should smell.
At the end of each summer several million Americans returning from rustic vacations discover, after living on genuine air for a few weeks, that their hometowns and highways smell of the sewer.
Smell has become a highly emotional issue in politics. If you bring it up, a lot of people call you an ecology freak, with that mean inflection they used to get in their voices when they called somebody who disagreed with them a Communist.
Well, and why shouldn’t a lot of people? If you make your living in certain ways you have to leave some garbage behind, and garbage usually smells bad. But you’re doing your best, aren’t you? Making a product people need. Why should you be the one they pick on to pay the bill because of a lot of ecology freaks?
Not surprisingly, politicians are not going to say you should be. Especially if, instead, they can be on television from the Paris peace talks telling you how they, with their tremendous dedication to the country and its great tasks and their matchless grasp of the hideous complexities of the Paris peace talks, are trying to bring you—you!—a generation of peace.
It is a lot easier to get a generation of peace than it is to get the country smelling halfway presentable again.
Nevertheless, stopping the country from smelling bad is a very great task, for a generation of peace is worth a good bit less if it has to be spent in a stench.
It may be worth nothing at all, if your luck is poor, in a land where armed maniacs may gun you down for stepping on their corns in crowded buses.
So there are a lot of great tasks. Maybe the greatest of all is to decide where America is going, so we will know whether a generation of peace is worth looking forward to.