Instant-classic Stanley Fish column - from his New York Times Blog - includes the Tags: John Milton, Katie Couric, Machiavelli…
Fish is focusing on Katie Couric’s “beyond politics” questions for the candidates as, to be modest, a sign of the downfall of humanity. While Fish’s argument is founded on a great point (and even better philosophical roots):
Why, when the office the candidates seek is a pre-eminently political one, does it make sense to go “beyond politics”? (It is as if you were looking for an office manager and decided to go “beyond organizational skills” by inquiring into the applicants’ tastes in books or music.)
But one has to wonder if it may not hurt to ask Mike Huckabee a question beyond politics, like “Mike, when was the last time you lied or stole?”
Probably wouldn’t get very far with the Huckster, but my point is “beyond politics” does not mean beyond the political and a well crafted question from Couric may enable the media to pressure candidates beyond stock political positions and force them to stumble when they have to answer questions like “do you know anyone who is gay?”
Fish is still brilliant though, read on:
CBS News may be right to rely on an “informal poll” indicating that “come November, policy issues may not rule the day.” The voters may well prefer the candidate who breathes virtue and rectitude to the candidate who demonstrates the kind of knowledge often associated with “policy wonks.”
If that in fact happens, the American electorate will have allied itself with one position in a long-running philosophical quarrel between those who think that the best persons make the best leaders and those who think that the best leader is the one most likely (by virtue of experience and skills) to get the job done.
Do you start with the inner landscape of the individual and project outward to his or her performance in office, or do you leave the inner weather of the candidates’ spiritual and psychological health to their therapists and pastors?
Each of the alternatives has had its powerful champions. In “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” John Milton tells us that when men first felt the need to institute government in order to ensure civil order, they chose one “above the rest” because of “the eminence of his wisdom and integrity.” If only Adam had not fallen, Milton adds, there would have been no necessity to choose anyone, for in the beginning “all men were naturally born free, being the image and resemblance of God himself” and were therefore born “to command not to obey.”
That’s just the trouble, declared his contemporary (and philosophical opposite) Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes agrees that in the abstract all men are equal and equally free, but that means that, left to their own devices, they will prey on one another and produce a general instability that will lead to most lives being “nasty, brutish and short.” Hobbes doesn’t believe in the natural goodness invoked by Milton (“the eminence of his wisdom and integrity”), and so he opts for the artificial solution of granting to one man (called the sovereign) all the rights and powers in the state provided that he secure the property of every man against the depredations of his neighbors and protect the country from its foreign enemies.
The sovereign’s ability to make good on these obligations will have nothing to do with his moral character — “the question of who is the better man,” Hobbes says, “has no place in the condition of mere nature” — and everything to do with his political skills. Hobbes insists that the “worthiness” to lead is different from “the worth or value of a man and also from his merit.” What is important is “a particular power or ability for that wherof he is said to be worthy; which particular ability is usually named fitness or aptitude.” Is he good at the job? — does he have the aptitude? — is a more pertinent question than is he good?
Hobbes was anticipated by Machiavelli, who noted that everyone always proclaims “how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith and to live with integrity and not with craft.”
But, says Machiavelli, everyone is wrong…
Posted by Andrew Bennett
Posted by Andrew Bennett
Posted by Andrew Bennett
