As the contemporary challenge to liberal democracy has escalated, political observers have distinguished between two unsatisfactory responses—the “illiberal democracy” of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and his acolytes and the “undemocratic liberalism” of experts, courts, and international bureaucracies. This up-to-the-minute analysis has deep historical roots. Throughout history, democracies have struggled against both populism and elitism, often in the form of individuals who present themselves as potential leaders.
Political communities need good leaders, but not all forms of political organization are equally hospitable to the leadership they need. There is a perennial worry that democracy and leadership are fundamentally at odds. While there is no contradiction between leadership and democratic principles, there is certainly a tension between leadership and democratic psychology. Some of this tension is productive, but much is not. Taken too far, the passions and emotions characteristic of democracy can end by weakening it.
We may wonder whether the excellences of leadership are everywhere and always the same. In Politics (III.4), Aristotle famously argues that the virtues of citizens are relative to the regime, by which he means that good citizens are not necessarily good human beings. What about leaders? Aristotle seems to suggest that the virtues of good rulers are the same as the virtues of good men, which are the same in all times and circumstances. If that were so, there would be nothing distinctive about democratic leadership.
But the matter is more complicated. Aristotle grounds politics in the human capacity for speech (I.2), and he goes on to argue that political leadership is qualitatively different from other kinds of rule in that it is governance “over free and equal persons” (I.7).1 Politics involves a relationship among human beings who are not in principle rightly subject to either coercion or command. The core of political rule is persuasion—the ability to induce agreement about what should be done. On the eve of Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration, outgoing president Harry Truman is said to have remarked, “[Ike] will say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ and nothing will happen. Poor Ike—it won’t be a bit like the army.”2 Although Truman failed to grasp how much of the success Eisenhower earned as supreme commander of the allied forces had rested on his powers of persuasion, he was right about the underlying principle: the essence of politics is coordination of wills through persuasion rather than through unquestioning obedience.
Whether good leadership is always and everywhere the same depends on whether the capacity for persuasion is the same in all political circumstances. To clarify this issue, we can turn to Rhetoric, in which Aristotle identifies three sources of persuasion—character, emotion, and argument. All three relate in different ways to the political context in which one is operating.
In the first place, certain character traits will commend speakers to their audience in some contexts but not others. As Aristotle puts it, “We ought to be acquainted with the characters of each form of government; for in reference to each, the character most likely to persuade must be that which is characteristic of it” (I.8).3 While certain traits—such as probity in financial matters and devotion to the common good—are universally prized, others are more regime specific. They promote a regime’s distinctive ends. If the end of democracy is liberty, then democratic citizens will prize traits seen as defending liberty. (From this perspective, it would be hard to improve on “Give me liberty or give me death.”) Other traits reflect and honor a regime’s core beliefs. If equal opportunity and upward mobility are prized, as they are in the United States, then someone who started with nothing and “worked her way up” will be regarded as possessing admirable traits of character—grit and determination, among others. As American history repeatedly shows, these traits commend themselves to democratic electorates and to their representatives. (No doubt Sonia Sotomayor’s inspiring rise from poverty eased her confirmation as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.)
Similarly, some emotions are more characteristic of democratic polities than others. For example, people who prize liberty tend to be on their guard against those who might deprive them of it, and those who wield power are in a position to do that. So democracy and suspicion of authority tend to go together. Another example: if the equal freedom of democratic citizens leads them to regard themselves as possessing equal worth and merit, then they will resent individuals seen as giving themselves airs—those whom they see as claiming to be better than others. Populist resentment is an enduring staple of democratic politics. To avoid resentment, democratic leaders from wealthy families must display an unfeigned common touch. Franklin Roosevelt once served hot dogs to the king and queen of England at a Hyde Park picnic, an event the New York Times treated as front-page news.4
A third example: as Plato was perhaps the first to observe, the democratic preference for liberty tends to generate a certain tolerance of varying ways of life. The desire to live just as one pleases softens antipathy to those who live differently but do not impede one’s own choices. “Live and let live” is a perennial democratic sentiment.
Finally, the premises that are generally accepted as bases of public argument will vary with the political context. For example, claims erected on the foundation of individual rights are more powerful in the United States than in most other nations—even other advanced democracies. Each country possesses a distinctive public culture: a set of beliefs that amalgamate principle, shared history, and distinctive ethnicities.
Is there a fundamental tension between leadership and the democratic principle of popular sovereignty? In a pathbreaking book, John Kane and Haig Patapan argue that there is. The principle of equality, on which democracy rests, “affords democrats no completely satisfying way of justifying leadership roles.” Supporters of democracy who believe in the necessity of leadership “must reconcile this with the belief that none among equals has any innate or inherent right to rule over others.”5
The Kane-Patapan thesis rests on an implied syllogism that runs like this:
Premise 1: The justification of leadership requires the belief that some individuals have an innate or inherent right to rule over others.
Premise 2: Principled democrats must reject the idea that anyone has such a right.
Conclusion: Democrats who understand their creed must believe that leadership cannot be justified in principle. To the extent that democrats feel the need for leadership in practice, they run up against a fundamental tension that can be managed but never eliminated.
Clearly, the second premise states a basic democratic commitment. But the syllogism fails because neither democratic principles nor the nature of leadership require us to accept the first premise. Democrats can embrace leadership as legitimate when it comes into being through popular authorization, and as appropriate when it serves democratic purposes. A democratic people can constitute leadership for instrumental reasons—because certain individuals have the capacities that the situation requires—without affirming that those individuals have a right to rule, simply by virtue of those capacities. Not even the singularly ideal person to lead a democracy has the right to lead it, unless the people have vested him or her with the power to do so. In democracies, the capacity to lead does not by itself confer a right to lead.
There may of course be prudential reasons for preferring some individuals over others to fill specific positions. Just as we seek a skilled plumber to fix a faucet, we want able generals to conduct a war and superior politicians to shape policy, because they know how to do something that promotes our good, as we understand it. The people would be wise, then, to choose the ablest politicians as their leaders, and their leaders would be wise to select the best generals to command their forces. But in a democracy, generals do not legitimately lead unless the people’s representatives have authorized them to do so. Individual ability is relevant, but legitimacy is dispositive, and democratic legitimacy comes only through public consent.
The people’s representatives may err, of course. President Lincoln promoted and then dismissed many generals before finding a few who could get the job done. Army chief of staff George C. Marshall did the same thing during World War II. The people have the right to make mistakes, but only their decisions can confer legitimacy.
There is no essential conflict between democratic equality and leadership. Moral equality—the idea that my interests count no more and no less than yours—is consistent with inequality of talents in every walk of life, including politics. Moral equality is the basis of popular sovereignty, which James Madison called the republican principle—a form of government that “derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people.”6 This principle is the core of republican legitimacy. Consistent with legitimacy so understood, the people may authorize whatever institutions they choose, including institutions of leadership, and they may revise or revoke such authorization as they see fit.
That said, well-designed democratic institutions endeavor to narrow the gap between the authorization to lead and capacity to do it well. Elections may be understood as an example of this effort. While they reflect the public’s will, they are also designed to select individuals with the requisite talent and character to discharge the duties of public office. As Aristotle observed, a lottery is the most purely democratic means of selecting public officials, while elections have an aristocratic tendency (Politics IV.9).
Members of America’s founding generation were well aware of this tendency, and they celebrated it. Defending the proposed constitution’s means of selecting the president, Alexander Hamilton declared in Federalist No. 68 that it would afford a “moral certainty” that the office would seldom fall to any man “who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” Indeed, he continued, “there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters preeminent for ability and virtue.”7 In a letter to John Adams, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. . . . May we not even say that that form of government is best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?” This, he argued, was the genius of our constitutional order, “to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, the separation of the wheat from the chaff.” Most of the time, we can rely on the people to make discriminating judgments, to “elect the really good and wise.”8
To be sure, episodes throughout history have challenged the founders’ confidence in elections as reliable sorting mechanisms. Some presidents, such as James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover, failed to meet the challenge of their times. Many Americans believe that Donald Trump lacks the knowledge and temperament that every president needs. From time to time in the life of every individual, passion overwhelms reason and judgment, and so too for peoples. Although well-designed institutions can reduce the odds of damaging mistakes, they cannot eliminate the possibility that voters in their least wise and moderate moments will act in ways that undermine their own interests and those of the country.
Are there any democratic alternatives to elections? Although selecting leaders by lottery is consistent with antielitist sentiments, I am unaware of any modern democracy that has used this procedure for any significant office. William F. Buckley Jr. once remarked that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand people listed in the Boston telephone directory than by the Harvard faculty, but this was a judgment on the deficiencies of Harvard.9 Some small towns have resorted to randomizing devices such as coin tosses to break tie votes for local offices, but invariably not much is at stake in such choices. The people recognize that elections allow them to make comparative judgments about qualifications for office. The candidates may be equal in the sight of God and the law yet differ in their capacity to fill positions of responsibility.
Leadership comes into conflict not with the principle of democracy but with its psychology. One aspect of this psychology is populism, a complex of sentiments and beliefs that includes the following:
• leveling—the belief that common sense trumps expertise and that ordinary citizens are better suited than experts to make decisions;
• animus against hierarchy—an instinctive bridling against taking orders from anyone;
• suspicion of power as inherently corrupt and self-dealing;
• mistrust of distance between the people and those chosen to represent them, and a desire for officials they can see and judge directly;
• mistrust of anything less than full transparency; and
• the demand for constant, as opposed to episodic, explanation and accountability.
Kane and Patapan are right to see these sentiments as at odds with the exercise of leadership. Carried too far, they are at odds with the people’s own interests, as they themselves understand them. (For example, Venezuela’s populist regime began by giving the people the economic and social programs they said they wanted, and ended by plunging the country into hyperinflation, deep recession, and widespread hunger.) Kane and Patapan are also right to point out the difference between the classical conception of democracy and modern liberalism. The latter contains principled limits to the scope of public power, and suspicion focuses primarily on the threats to liberty that emerge when government overreaches. In the classical conception of democracy, the focus is not on the scope of public power but rather on hierarchical relations among citizens. As the authors put it, “Democracy is at root a revolt against the rank ordering of society. . . . The leveling instinct of democracy is principally directed against the arrogance of inherited or entrenched power.”10
As a liberal democracy, governance in America incurs populist suspicion of both forms of arrogance. The people resent individuals who visibly regard themselves as superior to their fellow citizens and they also fear government that expands its power in a way that threatens liberty. During the Obama administration, these two populisms merged: opponents of the administration saw a dangerous growth in the scope of government, driven by the belief that a handful of elected or appointed officials could make better decisions for the people than the people could make for themselves. (For opponents of Obama’s health care reform, the boards of experts it established and empowered represented the distilled essence of this mindset.)
This stance represents perennial American populism, the sentiment that prevails during normal times, as distinguished from the variant that arises in response to perceived threats, when fear sparks the yearning for strong leadership. This perennial populism reflects America’s traditional suspicion of government power. Much of this suspicion is a by-product of representation, which is the only way democracy can function at all under what Madison called the extended republic. To be sure, there is more than one kind of representation. The Burkean view—the representative as trustee who pursues the common good as he or she sees it—is greatly admired in theory but avoided in practice. In contemporary democracies, voters can see what their representatives are doing, and they have limited tolerance for independent judgment. At the other extreme, voters are bound to be frustrated if they expect representatives identical to themselves. Democratic legislators must deal with myriad issues about which their constituents know little or nothing, and they must balance competing loyalties to their electorate, their party, and their country.
We are left with an inescapable social reality: whenever the people do not rule themselves directly, some individuals (agents) are asked to carry out the wishes of others (principals). But there is an extensive literature exploring how the interests of agents and principals diverge. Citizens would be foolish to assume that their representatives will advance their interests just because they have been sent to Washington and state capitals to do so.
There is a second pervasive fact that gives rise to suspicion: it is impossible to write laws, regulations, and rules to cover every eventuality. Thus no government can do without discretionary authority. Democracies use statutes and regulatory procedures to delimit the sphere of authorized discretion before the fact, and legislative oversight and elections to judge its use after the fact. They cannot hope to eliminate discretion altogether.
That unattainable desire, however, drives much of contemporary American politics. The understandable wish to ensure that no one is subject to the arbitrary will of another gives rise to an ever more elaborate system of rules, regulations, and review procedures. The result is not to eliminate discretion but to tie major institutions in knots, making them less and less able to make needed judgments and to do the people’s business. Americans’ fear of discretionary authority fuels the endless expansion of the bureaucracy they despise.
Up to a point, perennial populism has its uses. As Kane and Patapan observe, mistrust of leadership constitutes a barrier against tyranny, supplementing constitutional restraints. But so understood, populism often overshoots this mark, weakening the leaders and institutions needed to effectuate the people’s choices and promote the people’s welfare. Kane and Patapan adduce a remarkable quote from Henry Clay: “The pervading principle of our system of government—of all free government—is not merely the possibility, but the absolute certainty of infidelity and treachery.”11 Clay was a great leader, but he went far beyond the nuanced views of James Madison, who argued in Federalist No. 55: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among us for self-government.”12
This balanced judgment illuminates the difference between proper democratic caution and the populist culture of suspicion. Fear of corruption and tyranny can go so far as to undermine self-government. The point of democratic elections is to find people worthy of the people’s trust. When the people succumb to unalloyed mistrust, democracy loses its capacity to serve their interests.
The experience of democratic life can produce a stance diametrically opposed to populist resentment—namely, elitist arrogance. It is natural for people of unusual ability to believe that their merits entitle them to positions of leadership, and to a measure of deference. They may ask themselves why those of lesser merit should be able to confer or withhold what belongs by right to those with greater capacities, and they may come to feel thwarted and demeaned by the processes of popular consent.
Shakespeare presents us with a perfect example of such a man. Returning in triumph after his victory over the Volscians, the Roman nobleman and warrior Coriolanus is on the verge of being named consul. Once the Senate has given its consent, custom demands that the candidate present himself to the commoners and request their support. When he meets the people, they ask him why he has come. “Mine own desert,” he replies. The people are astonished and displeased; this is not the supplication they expected. Coriolanus then asks them the price of the consulship. “The price is, to ask it kindly,” replies one. The proud Coriolanus utters—but almost chokes on—the required words. After the citizens have taken their leave, he bursts forth in an angry soliloquy: “Better it is to die, better to starve, than crave the hire which first we do deserve” (Coriolanus, II.iii).13 As the play reveals, this passion is a threat to civic order.
General Douglas MacArthur may have been the American Coriolanus. A gifted and charismatic military leader and statesman who orchestrated Japan’s immediate postwar reconstruction, MacArthur’s belief in his own merits led him to challenge the principle of civilian control over the military. At the height of the Korean War, he sent a letter to the House minority leader disagreeing with President Truman’s effort to avoid a wider war with China, and his public statements undermined Truman’s diplomacy. In April 1951, Truman relieved him of command, replacing him with General Matthew Ridgway, who knew MacArthur as well as anyone did. Ridgway professed the deepest respect for his predecessor’s “abilities, for his courage and for his tactical brilliance . . . for his leadership, his quick mind and his unusual skill at going straight to the point of any subject and illuminating it. . . . He was . . . a truly great military man, a great statesman, and a gallant leader.” But Ridgway also noted MacArthur’s “tendency to cultivate the isolation that genius seems to require, until it became a sort of insulation . . . ; the headstrong quality . . . that sometimes led him to persist in a cause in defiance of all logic; [and] a faith in his own judgment . . . that finally led him close to insubordination.” If MacArthur had pursued the presidency, as he was widely expected to do in 1952 after his triumphant return to the United States, these qualities could have posed a threat to the constitutional order.14
One might think that while populist resentment is a deformation internal to democracy, overweening elitism is an external threat. But matters are not so simple. There is often a tension between government by the people and government for the people. While the people always desire their well-being, they are not always clear—or even coherent—about the means to that end. Talented and public-spirited individuals who genuinely want to promote the public interest can end up longing for leadership that is not regularly accountable to the people. The mirror image of the populism that disfigures today’s politics in America is a growing doubt, expressed more in private than in public, about the people’s capacity to govern themselves—especially when they are asked to endure short-term pain as the price of long-term gain.
Good democratic leaders combine capability and legitimacy: they have the attributes needed to exercise power wisely while respecting the ongoing need for public authorization. This distinctive ensemble helps us understand the specific skills and virtues of democratic leaders.
Good democratic leadership requires the specific skills needed to obtain and sustain public support. To begin with, democratic leaders must understand and be able to articulate the public culture of their community. In so doing, they invite the people to unite around the fundamentals of their civic identity. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which drew on America’s biblical and constitutional heritage, was a classic of that genre. So were Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” address and, in a different vein, Ronald Reagan’s acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican convention. Reagan summoned up the Mayflower Compact, the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, and even Thomas Paine. Invoking “family, work, neighborhood, peace and freedom,” he implored the American people to “renew our compact of freedom . . . for the sake of this, our beloved and blessed land.” He defined this “new beginning” as a commitment to “care for the needy; to teach our children the values and virtues handed down to us by our families; to have the courage to defend those values and the willingness to sacrifice for them [and] to restore, in our time, the American spirit of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and community initiative, a spirit that flows like a deep and mighty river through the history of our nation.”15 His deep patriotism impressed even those Reagan did not persuade and helped lay the foundation for an effective presidency.
Another key requirement of democratic leadership is the capacity to understand what is required in particular circumstances to maximize persuasion and popular consent. Earl Warren displayed this capacity in the months leading up to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. By 1952, five major school segregation cases had reached the Court, which decided to hear them collectively. The justices soon realized that they were badly divided. Unable to reach a resolution by the end of the 1952–53 term, they decided to rehear the case in December 1953. In the interim, Chief Justice Fred Vinson died, and Governor Earl Warren of California was confirmed as his replacement. Warren quickly concluded that unless the Court were united, a decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional would not achieve the requisite degree of public acceptance. Over the next six months, he worked patiently to bring about that result, adopting Justice Robert Jackson’s recommendation to delay taking formal votes until the issues had been thoroughly debated. This process enabled the justices to identify grounds for judgment on which all could agree. On May 14, 1954, the chief justice was able to announce a unanimous decision outlawing school segregation.16
This is not to say that Brown v. Board of Education evoked the same unity among the American people. Its legitimacy was bitterly contested, especially but not only in the South, inspiring the “Impeach Earl Warren” bumper stickers that festooned so many cars. Nonetheless, the judgment of most historians is that the Court’s unanimity added moral force to its decision. The ruling brought together nine justices with very different backgrounds, views, and jurisprudential tendencies. The Court spoke in the name of the nation, not an ideological faction, and its voice enjoyed a greater degree of trust and deference than it would otherwise have received. We will never know, of course, what would have happened if the case had been decided by a 5–4 margin. Still, Warren’s achievement stands as an example of democratic leadership in action.
Timing is vital to successful leadership. Act too early, and conditions are not ripe; too late, and the momentum has ebbed. As Brutus famously proclaimed in Julius Caesar (IV.iii), “There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.”17 Knowing which way the tide is running, and whether it is strong enough, is one of the most difficult judgments for any leader to make.
This was the question Abraham Lincoln faced as he wrestled with the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Abolitionists were pressuring him to free all the slaves, while Northern Democrats and the loyal border states pushed hard in the other direction. The available evidence suggested that a majority of the public was opposed to emancipation. On the other hand, the longer Lincoln waited, the greater the chance that Britain and France would recognize the Confederacy, dealing a severe blow to Union prospects. To complicate matters further, he believed he had no peacetime authority under the Constitution to end slavery. Emancipation could be justified (if at all) only as an exercise of his powers as commander in chief. But resting his case on military necessity meant that slaves could be freed only in states (or portions of states) under Confederate control. So conceived, the Emancipation Proclamation would free slaves over whom he did not exercise control, while leaving those he did control in servitude—an irony his Abolitionist critics repeatedly underscored.
Lincoln navigated carefully through these shoals. He began by discussing the matter with his cabinet in the summer of 1862, arguing that the Proclamation had to be seen as an act of strength rather than desperation. Union successes at Antietam met that condition, enabling Lincoln to move forward in two stages. In September 1862, he announced his intention to emancipate the slaves in all areas of the Confederacy not under Union control as of January 1, 1863. As he feared, even this modest first step sparked a fierce political reaction and became a campaign issue. Opposition Democrats gained twenty-eight House seats in the midterm election of 1862, as well as the governorship of New York—a serious reversal, but not a death knell for congressional Republicans or the Lincoln administration. The Proclamation itself, issued as promised on January 1, 1863, not only shored up Lincoln’s standing among radical Republicans but also persuaded Britain and France, both of which had already abolished slavery, not to recognize the Confederacy—a major turning point in the war.18
In retrospect, it appears Lincoln’s timing was correct. If Lincoln had moved more precipitately, the negative response would probably have been even greater, and opposition Democrats might have gained enough power in the 1862 election to challenge Republican war policies. If he had waited much longer, recognition by France and Britain could have strengthened the South enough to produce a long stalemate and rising support for peace talks in the North. As it was, the Democrats drafted a platform calling for an immediate cease-fire, and Lincoln’s reelection victory over George McClellan hung in the balance until the fall of 1864, when Union military successes shifted public opinion in his favor.
In addition to skills, democratic leadership requires a strong set of virtues to safeguard it from going astray. One such virtue is what I call democratic humility: the belief that the legitimacy of your power ultimately depends on the will of the people, not just on your own merit. It is easier to state this proposition than to practice it. During the confirmation process for senior positions in the executive branch and the judiciary, even the most outstanding nominees are instructed to flatter the people’s representatives, to answer—gravely and respectfully—even their most uninformed questions, and to treat even their most trivial utterances as timeless aphorisms. Candidates for high elective office find themselves pressured to evade what they know to be the real choices and to make promises they know they cannot keep. Many officials privately believe—even if they will not publicly admit—that sound public policy requires substantial insulation from public scrutiny. Lincoln thought that only a carefully cultivated reverence for the Constitution—and the principle of human equality at its base—could save us from antidemocratic sentiments. Madison believed that the chastening effects of elections—the requirement to seek public authorization—would habituate us to respect republican norms.19 Both understood the centrality of democratic humility to the kind of leadership that preserves and strengthens self-government.
The tension between leadership and democratic humility comes to a head in moments of civic danger. Statesmanship is a particular kind of leadership displayed in particular circumstances. It is an ensemble of qualities that enable its possessors to preserve regimes against profound challenges or to improve them in fundamental ways. Times that call only for routine governance do not permit the exercise of statesmanship, which can be displayed only in extreme situations—founding, war, economic collapse, deep civic division. Ambitious leaders in tranquil times (Bill Clinton, for one) sometimes yearn for less orderly circumstances in which they can distinguish themselves. But if leaders prove unequal to such circumstances, as did James Buchanan in the 1850s and Neville Chamberlain in the 1930s, they only win ignominy.
Democratic peoples—especially Americans—respond strongly to moral narratives that cleanly distinguish between the forces of good and evil. They have a harder time coming to grips with moral complexity and ambiguity. Private and public morality sometimes diverge. The norms of foreign policy and war are not congruent with those of domestic affairs. And the virtues of the private household do not always map neatly onto those of the public household. For example, most economists believe that poorly timed public thrift—austerity—can make a bad economic situation worse. But most people have a hard time understanding why it can be right for a government to spend more than it is taking in—especially if the public deficit is used to finance current consumption. While many parents grasp the rationale of going into debt to finance a college education, they are loath to cosign loans for children’s fancy cars and flat-screen TVs.
President Obama faced—or thought he faced—this kind of problem early in his administration. The Great Recession generated pressure to humiliate and punish the financial leaders the people held responsible for the housing collapse. In the administration’s view, this demand raised two problems. First, responsibility for the financial meltdown was broadly shared among many institutions and individuals (including improvident borrowers as well as reckless lenders). Second, with the global financial system tottering, a frontal attack on financial leaders could bring a complete collapse. So the administration shored up the banks, incurring the public’s wrath. Few financial leaders faced trial, and none of any significance went to jail. The clash between the moral narrative and the perceived imperatives of public policy could not have been sharper. (Political pundits and policy experts continue to debate the accuracy of President Obama’s assessment.)
The last, most needed, most paradoxical attribute of democratic leadership is the willingness to forgo power when attaining and maintaining it requires morally unacceptable compromise. Democratic politics at its best is the use of publicly authorized power to advance the common good. Would-be leaders, then, can fail in two ways: they may be unable to obtain public support for their agenda, or they may win support by advocating only what the people want to hear. While modern survey research has raised the assessment of public beliefs to a high art, the temptation to pander to them is a perennial weakness of democratic politics.
On the other hand, principled aspirants cannot hope to win power by bluntly saying exactly what they believe. For example, while his desire to support Britain’s struggle against Nazi Germany was completely justified, FDR might well have lost his 1940 reelection campaign if he had been completely candid about it. So he equivocated. When Wendell Willkie, the Republican presidential nominee, claimed that a vote for Roosevelt meant war in 1941, Roosevelt countered with a flat promise to the contrary—“Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars”—deliberately omitting the Democratic platform’s qualifying phrase, “except in case of attack.” When one of his speechwriters asked about the omission, he replied, “Of course we’ll fight if we’re attacked. If someone attacks us, then it isn’t a foreign war, is it?”20 This mental reservation allowed Roosevelt to pretend that he wasn’t trying to mislead the people, which of course he was.
On a deeper level, though, one can offer a moral as well as democratic defense of Roosevelt’s strategy. FDR knew that Americans would fight if attacked, even if they would turn against someone who said so in advance of the attack, and he believed that he was the best man to lead America in the war he considered inevitable. So he stayed as close to the truth as democratic politics would permit. Still, campaign utterances have consequences. What many heard as a promise to keep the United States out of war made it more difficult for FDR to mobilize public support for the lend-lease program, without which Britain might have collapsed before Pearl Harbor brought America into the war.
Although Franklin Roosevelt was a man of sincere convictions, it is not clear what political risks he was willing to run in their defense. John McCain, by contrast, was willing to jeopardize his career to adhere to his principles. Frustrated by his primary defeat to George W. Bush in 2000, his desire to run and win in 2008 was palpable. At the same time, he believed that the national interest required a new approach to immigration policy. This stance greatly dismayed most Republicans, in and out of Congress. McCain, who had begun his quest for his party’s nomination as the frontrunner, found that his support had all but evaporated by the summer of 2007. His lonely but successful effort to revive his candidacy is one of the most remarkable chapters in the annals of modern American politics.
These episodes suggest that Plato’s judgment of democratic publics was too harsh. True, the people do not welcome being told what they do not want to hear. At the same time, they admire individuals who come before them with strong convictions about their community’s best interests. Candor fosters trust, and a reputation for trustworthiness is one of the most valuable assets a democratic politician can acquire.
Because many Americans regarded Hillary Clinton as deficient in candor, they did not trust her, and their mistrust overwhelmed the appeal of her knowledge and experience. Conversely, those who supported Donald Trump saw him as a man of strong convictions who would say what he believed, regardless of the consequences, and this tendency more than counterbalanced statements and attributes that would have disqualified any other candidate. The chaotic early months of Trump’s presidency led even members of his own party to wonder whether the American people got it right.
Extracts are from pp. 15–31, chapter 2, “Populist Resentment, Elitist Arrogance: Two Challenges to Good Democratic Leadership” by William A. Galston, from Good Democratic Leadership: On Prudence and Judgment in Modern Democracies, edited by John Kane and Haig Patapan. © the several contributors 2014. By permission of Oxford University Press.