Citizenship

After a busy week at work, I'm getting back on track. Coming up soon: Energy, Race and Rome! But for now, here goes...

It occurred to me that a majority of the stuff I’ve been writing here is pre-occupied not with the particulars of one candidate or the other, but the reasons why both candidates deserve respect and careful consideration this election season.

In thinking this through, it occurred to me that this was only partly because of the unique character of this year’s candidates. True, more than in any election I can remember, we seem to be facing the choice between two individuals who are not in the mould of the various governors and legislators we’ve had to choose from in the past. As admirable as many of the people I’ve voted for and against over the years may have been, they all seem to have emerged from the same well of people who have been preparing to run for president their entire lives. Whatever else one might think of McCain or Obama (or both), calling either of them “run-of-the-mill” or “more-of-the-same” would represent missing something truly important.

All that said, there’s also something about being undecided that gets you thinking about the institution of the presidency itself and whether or not the partisan brinksmanship we’ve experienced over the last decade (from the Whitewater/Vince Foster/Monica Lewinski/prosecution/impeachment launched against Bill Clinton to the “Bush Lied About Everything Ever”/Impeach Them Now! hysteria of the last eight years) might be damaging an office that will always be more important than any person holding it.

Reflecting on this brought me back, once again, to my favorite writer Lee Harris who, in 2004, wrote an essay responding to the criticism that the author was guilty of “Bush-ite cheerleading.” Rather than pose indignantly against accusations of partisanship, Harris instead reflected on the fact that he was indeed a cheerleader for the president, not because he agreed with the current president (or any president) on all things, but because a society or enterprise of any scale requires a certain level of automatic respect for authority if it is to function, much less be successful.

Giving those in authority the benefit of the doubt is somewhat counterintuitive. After all, shouldn’t we grant authority only to those who have earned our respect? Certainly American history is steeped in defying those in power, and where would our popular culture be without stories and movies celebrating dolts at the top getting their comeuppance?

Yet the notion of an office being more important than any person holding is just as entrenched in Western culture. Harris points out the dilemma of Saint Augustine who had to determine whether a priest would remain a priest because of his personal qualities (loyalty to the church, learning, virtue) or regardless of them. “St. Augustine bit the bullet,” describes Harris. “With ruthless logic, he saw that any alternative [to a priest’s authority resting in his title alone], no matter how counterintuitive, would have to be preferable to a solution that destroyed the very possibility of the church as a stable, orderly, and hierarchical institution.”

Those of us who have lived and worked in large organizations may wonder if “destroying the possibility” of such “hierarchical institutions” may not be worth considering. Yet think about that for a moment. We are all part of several large institutions simply by virtue of being born into a society and thus being, at minimum, a citizen of a locality, region and country. Even the citizens of tiny Liechtenstein are part of an institution with tens of thousands of members. Scale that up to 300,000,000 Americans with national, regional, ethnic and group identities and the problem of resting authority solely on the virtues of those in power becomes clear.

For how many of us truly get to see the virtues and vices of our leaders (be they CEO’s of corporations, generals, governors or the President) up close? We may think we know them, especially those who are constantly on our TV screens and magazine covers, but those are glimpses at best. And even if we knew our President inside and out as well as many people pretend to, what does it mean to say that I will only respect that leader’s authority once he or she has proven themselves to me?

The alternative to living in a society of large institutions (companies, states, countries) where the leaders are given a certain level of automatic authority (ideally within a structure of accountability) is not the anarchist paradise whereby society is organized as a network of smaller institutions each run by consensus or led only by those who have demonstrated their right to rule to all members of the group. For such tiny groups will always fall pretty to an omnipresent threat of ruthless tyranny.

As Harris describes, tyrants create the illusion that they have been given leadership over the institutions they rule by virtue of their intimacy with and approval of everyone in the society. Thus, the 50 foot posters of the leader on every street corner in nations like Stalin’s Russia, Assad’s Syria or Kim’s North Korea. The smiling face of the dictator is meant to give the tyrant the appearance of being part of everyone’s family, everyone’s lives (the reason for the mass rallies where the population must outpour their love to their all-wise, all-loving master). And just in case sincere love is not plentiful enough to hold a society together, omnipresent terror is the way this particular circle is always squared.

Despite the hysterical partisanship we’ve been subjected to over the last two decades, have we really reached a point where our leaders are so despicable, so untrustworthy that extraordinary measures need to be taken (such as impeaching them while in office, or prosecuting them once they’ve left)? Or have we elevated our political differences (and to a certain extent, ourselves) to the position of Judge Penitent whereby the failings of our leaders (especially in the party we didn’t vote for) are subject to abject condemnation, while similar-size failings of our friends (or ourselves) are ignored (or turned into virtues)?

Letting Lee Harris have the final word, the writer provided a host of things with which he disagrees with the Bush administration, then stopped to review the vocabulary he has chosen for his criticism:

“ in going over the above litany of proffered advice, let me stress the all important role of those gentle words "urged," "disagreed," "questioned" and "suggested." These are words that indicate respect for the beliefs of those whose mind you are trying to change, and are explicitly chosen for the single purpose of making it more likely that they will change their minds, as opposed to less likely. They are the words used by reasonable men and women when they come together to discuss high and weighty questions, and are far preferable to words that are designed to belittle, revile, and anger -- at least, if you are interested in changing the world, rather than merely bellowing at it."

“They are also the words that I would use to convey any disagreement that I might happen to have with a President Kerry, or a President Edwards, or yet another President Clinton. Yet such disagreements would never keep me from cheering them on, just as they have not kept me from cheering on George Bush. Indeed, I will support them with equal zeal when and if their time comes to take up the awful duty of the Presidency, and if I disagree with them, I find myself once more in the peculiar position of hoping that I shall be shown to be wrong, and the President with whom I disagree will be shown to be right; because all that is bruised when I am wrong is my ego. But when a President of the United States is wrong, we all suffer.”