Essay: ON SEEKING A HERO FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

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IF the task of finding the ideal President were turned over to an executive recruiting agency, its scouts would find the U.S. full of men of extraordinary ability. They would be dazzled by all the bright lawyers, economists and scientists, the able mayors who run cities more populous than states. The country teems with brilliant managers of great organizations, including virtuosos who shift effortlessly between corporations, foundations and Government service. Quite a few such men know more about the nation's besetting problems than any visible presidential candidate.

The age cries out for greatness in the White House. The trouble is not only that so many talented Americans shun politics, but also that no sort of accomplishment in other fields necessarily qualifies a man for the extraordinary demands of the presidency. Solemn reformers will doubtless one day propose a special Presidential Academy with a faculty of hundreds. Enrollment would be for a decade, the curriculum immense and open-ended. With his power over nuclear war or peace, the American President can do no less than strive to be the world's most rational man; a philosophy degree might help, at least a little. Surely he also needs degrees in law, economics, political science and military strategy, to say nothing of personnel management.

Morality Play

Alas, no amount of schooling is likely to produce the philosopher-king who could truly handle a job that may be getting too big for one individual. And even the present system may not be so bad as it often seems. The electoral machinery is ramshackle, the campaigns absurdly long, and yet they train the survivors in many skills that are as necessary to governing as they are to getting elected: the skills of compromise, of horse trading, of creating coalitions.

Far more than all that, a President has to establish moral authority based on public trust. Indeed, the whole art of governing a democracy lies in mustering popular consent on a vast scale. A President must have convictions, a vision of where the nation should travel; he must summon the national mood and push it in the right direction. If he fails to give his people a sense of participation in crucial decisions, his politics may be doomed from the start. "A President," says Political Scientist lames MacGregor Burns, "must be both preacher and politician."

The President must really assume a role in a morality play, a ritual drama in which Americans expect him to slay evil. That idea goes back to the founders' exultant belief that America was truly God's country, the nation charged with the task of proving that a free society could thrive. This belief lingers, and it is not confined to assertive patriots. Consciously or unconsciously, it is shared by the country's harshest critics, including the New Left, whose very anger is based partly on the assumption that the U.S. should be near-perfect, a working Utopia.