Essay: Consistency as a Minor Virtue

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The fact that the Democrats taped their televised response to President Reagan's State of the Union message several days before the message was delivered suggests that inconsistency has not been one of the President's problems. As it turned out, Reagan, while not changing his tune in the speech, did play it in a lower register; but little he said could be called inconsistent with previous pronouncements. Indeed, the President has succeeded remarkably in projecting the image of the absolutely predictable man, firm to the point of adamancy, a hard, if amiable, Mount Rushmore head beset with frantic, cajoling advisers, crawling in the ears, tugging at the hair, cooing, shoving, grunting, pleading, praying for a budge. But budge he does rarely, and then most reluctantly. He changes positions, but never his mind.

Still, consistency can be a bona fide virtue, if a small one. Consistency in public life. Consistency in private. The consistency of principle, of philosophy, habit, appearance, of behavior toward subordinates, lovers and friends. To know where a leader stands is a major test of his leadership. That, and to measure where someone stands against the spot he swore to stand on, so as to determine if the person is dependable, reliable. Banks and dogs share this virtue.

Such a character was Captain Mac Whirr of Joseph Conrad's short story Typhoon, a man whose physiognomy was "the exact counterpart of his mind: it had no pronounced characteristics whatever; it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled." Mac Whirr, said Conrad, had "just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day." Yet that meager imagination became the hero of the tale, for when a monstrous storm arose at sea, and the good captain was advised by all the voices of reason to sail around and behind the trouble, he of the consistent mind responded, "A gale is a gale, and a full-powered steamship has got to face it." That he did. The ship was knocked to pieces, but it did get through.

In a sense, Conrad was saying that the hard noses of the world account for its stabilities, and quite often this is true. Certainly, if one were to name a single quality common to world leaders nowadays, that quality would be consistency. Reagan, Thatcher, Begin, Andropov, the Pope; all different, all stubborn, all operating on presumptions and premises that almost never bend or vary. Bernard Berenson observed, "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." But if consistency were not judged virtuous to some degree, it would hardly be in popular demand, nor would politicians be so passionate to exhibit it.