The Leader We Deserve

Peace and prosperity. During the last decade of the 20th century, Americans enjoyed more of both than any other people in history. Not all Americans, but most. Certainly most voters. Then came 9/11, and out went secure peace, but we still had prosperity. And then last month, the other shoe dropped. Now both peace and prosperity seem uncertain. When we were riding high, we called it "business as usual" and found it intolerable. Politicians of every stripe promised to rescue us with a magic elixir: "change." Well, now we have change. Kind of makes you miss that old business as usual, doesn't it?

The presidential campaign has been going full bore for more than a year, but suddenly everything that happened before about a month ago seems irrelevant. Through the fog of partisanship, we can acknowledge that both candidates are good men. But good isn't enough. This time we need greatness.

Greatness is a compliment generally conferred in retrospect. We have lucked out several times in our history when implausible characters showed unexpected greatness when it was needed: a country lawyer from Illinois, a spoiled patrician in a wheelchair, to name two obvious examples. Even more miraculous (though troublesome for democracy), both Lincoln and F.D.R. were elected by promising more or less the opposite of what they did in office. Lincoln said he'd preserve the institution of slavery. F.D.R. said he'd balance the federal budget.

Although looking for universal qualities of greatness is a historians' parlor game, different historical moments require different qualities. Does either of this year's candidates have the seeds of greatness? I think both do. But unfortunately, our current political system seems designed to weed out precisely the qualities that are most needed at the moment.

One attribute we don't need, although commonly associated with greatness in a leader, is empathy. Politicians--including the two at the top--tell the great American middle class that its problems are not its fault. Or that, whoever may be at fault, the problems can be solved if only we can agree on a tax cut. When in the second presidential debate the candidates were asked what "sacrifices" Americans should expect to make in order to address the financial crisis, John McCain promised to "examine every agency and every bureaucracy of government" and "eliminate those that aren't working," though he didn't name any. Barack Obama said "each and every one of us" would have to "start thinking about how we can save energy" and then offered a subsidy to people who buy U.S.-made cars.

What we need instead from a leader is astringency. Astringency means telling people what they don't want to hear and leading them where they don't want to go. It's not comforting people about their current situation and reassuring them it will get better. It's telling them that the situation is likely to get worse and that only their efforts can determine how soon it will start getting better. Astringent leadership is Churchill calling on Britons to "brace ourselves to our duties."