The New Republic
Hero Schmeroby Michael Currie Schaffer
In choosing a president next year, it's probably best to leave personal admiration out of it==Isn't it about time America had a president we could admire? That's not some stump-speech rhetorical question. Rather, as the country heads into an election year, it's a significant subject--one that has become central to the battle between the supposedly admirable Barack Obama and the supposedly unsympathetic Hillary Clinton. The arguments from Obama's cheering section invariably boil down to the idea that their guy would be a president worthy of admiration, not just partisan loyalty. And though she certainly has her true believers, that's not something you're hearing a lot about Mrs. Clinton. The contrast must be something of a problem for the former First Lady, since she now seems to have adopted a strategy that involves taking a hammer to the Illinois Senator's halo.
...If you're watching an epic movie, of course, you want option number one: the hero. In the less cheerful world of real history, though, option number two has its merits. Political admiration does funny things to people: We suspend our skepticism, take things on faith, ignore contrary evidence. The institutions that are supposed to act as checks on power grow timid, either because they're afraid of the voters, like Congress, or anxious about their audience, like the media. On the other hand, a leader with no reserve of faith among the general public doesn't have those luxuries. The whole world is watching with distrust, so you'd better do your job perfectly.
...You don't have to look too far to find an example. George W. Bush was literally an action-figure hero to his legions of admirers, a man worthy of emulation. They loved his personal religious faith, his plain-spoken language, his sweeping assertions of power. The fact that Bush's political foes viewed those qualities as either phony or unworthy of admiration only made the bond stronger. Now, as his administration staggers to its end amidst towering debts and troubled foreign entanglements, I'm betting some of them wish they'd been a bit more skeptical when it counted. The country would surely be better off. For that matter, Bush would probably be better off, too, had he been capable of the alertness that comes from knowing you have to prove yourself everyday.
America's fascination with turning presidents into moral exemplars springs from the Constitution's commingling of the jobs of head of state and head of government. It might, in fact, be easier to do the dirty business of governing in a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, where the figurehead monarch inspires misty-eyed patriotism while the prime minister is, personally, no more than a guy who clawed his way to the legislative leadership. Although large periods of the 19th century featured unloved one-termers in the White House, we now expect more than that. Today's state of affairs, in an odd way, renders voters kind of childish, clinging to a naïve faith that no human, and no political office, deserves. Worship-generating leaders have certainly had their uses, but in launching the post-Bush era, it might be more helpful to remember that elected officials are just another class of professional. I never swooned for Bush. The Clintons put me off for all the standard reasons. Indeed, I'm the sort of card-carrying blue-stater who's supposed to go weak in the knees for a CV like Obama's. But perhaps it would be better for the country to have a president that no one much liked.
http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=699811f0-7737-428c-a963-7274236cb488
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