Why Good Men Do Not Become President
3rd October 2012
After all, what sane person would want a job that destroys your privacy, makes it impossible for you to go out on the street, subjects your family to intrusive media scrutiny, forces you to watch everything you say, and drives some people to want to take a shot at you? Apparently someone who feels that the power that comes with the office is worth the attendant indignities.
“Great men are almost always bad men,” Lord Acton famously said. “There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” Indeed, good men rarely run for president. And when they do, they rarely win. An honest man stands no chance against a Lyndon Johnson or a Richard Nixon. Yes, one slips through the cracks now and then. We could use Grover Cleveland’s restraint in handling the economic crisis today. I have a particular fondness for Calvin Coolidge, who conspicuously lacked the pathological need for attention that characterizes most officeholders.
And, of course, I’ve been saying for years that our political system is set up to encourage corruption and make sure that the people who get elected are the wrong sort of people to be in public office.
October 3rd, 2012 at 11:54
Speaking of Coolidge, I remember an anecdote told about that notoriously tacitern president.
He was at a summer rental in New England one Sunday with the press corps crowded around trying to get something to write. One of the reporters asked the President what he had done that morning.
CC: “Went to church.”
Rep: “What was the subject of the sermon?”
CC: “It was a about sin.”
Rep: “What did the preacher have to say about it?”
*pause*
CC: “He’s against it.”
Probably apocryphal, but priceless nonetheless.