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Perspectives on Political Science

ISSN: 1045-7097 (Print) 1930-5478 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/vpps20

Statesmanship Reconsidered

Richard S. Ruderman

To cite this article: Richard S. Ruderman (2012) Statesmanship Reconsidered, Perspectives on Political Science, 41:2, 86-89, DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2012.660841

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2012.660841

Published online: 09 Apr 2012.

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Perspectives on Political Science, 41:86–89, 2012 Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1045-7097 print / 1930-5478 online DOI: 10.1080/10457097.2012.660841

Statesmanship Reconsidered RICHARD S. RUDERMAN

Abstract: Statesmanship can be exercised in a variety of situations, not all of which involve sitting in the Executive Office. This response examines three of the most impressive American efforts at statesmanship—that of Madison in his capacity as Founder (on how best to secure rights), Franklin as author of a new American Way of life (based on virtues freed from religious seriousness), and Lincoln as theorist of a political morality. All three examples, I argue, provide evidence that a statesman is more than just a politician who has been dead for some time.

Keywords: statesmanship, Bill of Rights, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, way of life, Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare

W ith a refreshing breadth of vision, the three articles under consideration do not limit their definition of statesmanship to the amusing but perhaps too cynical re- mark of Harry Truman: a statesman is a politician who’s been dead for a while.

Only Rafael Major considers as a statesman an actual Amer- ican President, Abraham Lincoln; Jeremy Bailey examines James Madison not as President but as a Founder, chiefly with an eye toward the proper place of a Bill of Rights within a liberal constitutional framework, and Christopher Bald- win examines Benjamin Franklin, not with respect to any political act proper but rather as an author (through his Auto- biography) of something like the new American way of life. Statesmanship, according to all three of our authors, then, is to be understood as a pedagogic or even architectonic art that, in Baldwin’s words, seeks “to shape not only American political institutions, but also and especially the character and way of life of [their] fellow citizens” (Baldwin, 3).

According to all three authors, liberal democracy cannot be understood as a political regime indifferent to the way(s)

Richard S. Ruderman is Associate Professor and Chair, De- partment of Political Science at the University of North Texas.

of life of its citizens. Even the best engineered political insti- tutions will, of themselves, neither produce healthy citizens nor be sustained by the indiscriminate production of any and all human types. Liberal democracies require, for their main- tenance and health, liberal democratic citizens. And such citizens, with apologies to Shakespeare, are neither born lib- eral democrats, nor can have liberal democratic sentiments thrust upon them: they must achieve the character of liberal democrats.

Let us first examine Bailey’s account of James Madison, the statesman as founder. Bailey focuses on the question of Madison’s puzzling and controversial volte face with respect to a Bill of Rights: as he says, “Madison was against the Bill of Rights before he was for it” (Bailey, 2). That is, Madison began from the Federalist position that including a written Bill of Rights within the Constitution would likely be dam- aging to the cause of liberal democracy. As Bailey points out, this view comes not from the crabbed perspective of a doubter, unwilling to extend to citizens their rights. Rather, it arises from a concern that, by listing some rights, the in- evitably damaging conclusion would be drawn that there were no others to be retained or exercised. The Federalist case against a Bill of Rights, initially supported by Madison, amounts to a reliance on two articles of faith: first, that “the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a Bill of Rights” (Federalist #84), that is, faith that the structure of republican government itself, filter- ing out the indulgent (and oppressive) passions of the people through the mechanism of representation will ensure that the ambitious defense of the people’s rights can be counted on to “counter” any ambitious efforts to restrict them; and sec- ond, that the people can be expected, even in the absence of any hortatory effort on the part of government, to recognize, exercise, and seek to defend their rights.

Over time, Madison might appear to have begun to en- tertain doubts about each of these articles of faith, in par- ticular the latter. However adept at channeling majority sen- timent the Constitution might prove to be, there remained reasons to fear that, on some occasions, even constitutional majorities would need to be restrained. And to do that (at

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some future moment of crisis or heightened anger), Madi- son seems to have concluded, some force “more powerful than any majority” (as Bailey quotes Goldwin, p. 4) would have to be inserted into the Constitution. The statesman-as- founder sought to arm all future statesmen with a weapon they could ill afford to do without in sometimes doing battle with majorities, especially in the states (where, according to the “layer-cake” view of federalism prevalent at the founding, the authority of the national government did not extend). But much more, one could educate, via a Bill of Rights, all future majorities to respect their own limitations. Public opinion could be kept squarely on the side of individual rights. (This is particularly important, Bailey suggests, insofar as Madi- son may have been an opponent of judicial review, the notion that the “least powerful branch” could—or even had the right to—enforce individual rights against majority sentiment.)

Madison, then, became a respectful critic of public opin- ion. He knew, perhaps better than any other Founder, the need to work with and even placate public opinion. But he also knew that public opinion could and should be educable. (The latter involved overcoming a certain earlier distaste on Madison’s part for giving a “harangue”—p. 10.) According to this reading of his reversal, Madison became, one might say, a Lincoln avant la lettre.

As Bailey points out, the most essential component of Madison’s change of heart is his changed understanding of “opinion” and its role in democratic government. Madison’s ambivalence concerning opinion (he first omits, and then includes it as a cause, along with “passion and interest,” of faction in Federalist #10) seems to resolve itself into his final view (expressed in a 1788 letter to Jefferson) that opinion, if educated, can “mitigate the [true] causes of faction, passion and interest” (Bailey, 20). This would mean, as Bailey notes, Madison is in this crucial respect closer to Jefferson than is commonly recognized: both men feared that the people, in the absence of a continuing political education in the meaning of rights, would tend to sacrifice them for their interests (23).

Ultimately, however, Bailey prefers the more practical po- litical reasons that Madison may have had both for initially objecting to a Bill of Rights and eventually for acquiescing in it. Initially, his opposition arose from his desire to avoid at all costs a second convention that would, no doubt, open up other cans of worms that would destroy the delicate agreement se- cured at the first. And Madison may have then come to accept the inclusion of a Bill of Rights chiefly in order to increase the prospects of ratification. Most of all, he seems finally to have doubted the educative power of a Bill of Rights: outside of the private letter to Jefferson (in France at the time), Madi- son appears not to have advanced the argument at all. Bailey concludes that Madison may have been consistent through- out his career in his recognition of the imperfections of the Constitution, but there was no clear unity in his treatment of them. He hoped to secure a place for both future delib- eration and judgment, unconstrained by strict constitutional strictures, and future veneration of the Constitution as a com- pact not to be altered. Madison’s ambivalence mirrors that of statesmanship as such: it must sometimes conserve and other times innovate, but each aspect of statesmanship risks undermining the other.

Christopher Baldwin classifies Franklin’s literary efforts to limn a “new character and way of life” for Americans as an instance of “classical” American statesmanship. On the one hand, “classical” statesmanship need not be exercised from political office and, on the other, concerns itself with a far more fundamental issue than “who gets what, when, and how.” If there was an American Founder who believed that the Constitution was a “machine that would run of itself,” Franklin was not that man. In order to succeed, America would have to be populated by citizens still dedicated to virtue, albeit a virtue of an altogether new sort. To that end, Franklin sought to “shape” his fellow citizens’ “moral opin- ions and character” (Baldwin, 5).

Baldwin devotes considerable attention to the rhetorical manner by which Franklin proceeds. It can be character- ized as the polar opposite of that utilized by Cotton Mather. Charming instead of hectoring, insinuating where the latter was blunt, Franklin’s every remark serves to invite his read- ers to look at this world as a place of promise and possibility, rather than as a fallen one within whose crevices nothing but enticement to sin can be found. As though adding a new “Life” to the pages of Plutarch (a book he avidly read as a boy), Franklin advances most of his moral lessons through his portrayal, in his Autobiography, of his own life. The over- arching lesson seems to be that, from humble circumstances, anyone can rise to a useful and comfortable station in a lib- eral democracy. To do so, however, requires that one learn to run away, not from home, so much as from “the ideas of the Old World” (Baldwin, 8).

Chief among those “old” ideas is “religious seriousness.” As a young man, Franklin tried his hand at refuting the basis of religion by writing and publishing “A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain.” For his troubles, Franklin began to be pointed at “with horror.” From this, says Baldwin, Franklin learned not to reconsider his own ideas but, rather, not to express them publicly. Rather than attack religion for its falseness, Franklin turned to defending it for its utility. But, says Baldwin, this manner of defense might be the most effectual way to bring his readers to “take the question of religion’s truth less seriously than the question of its utility” (Baldwin, 10). Franklin then draws out the political ramifications of this shift in perspective. While a True religion cannot abide dissenters, a “useful” one can “tolerate” and even encourage others that, true or not, can assist people in becoming better people and better citizens.

Franklin opposes religious seriousness in part because it feeds and is fed by moral seriousness. And moral seriousness—in the sense of unwavering devotion to a prin- ciple, come what may—is “foolish at best and hypocritical at worst” in political life (Baldwin, 12). Preparing the way for such events as Frederick Douglass’s later break with William Lloyd Garrison, Franklin elevates the “ethics of responsibil- ity” (as Max Weber was later to call it) over the “ethics of intention.”

As though it followed in principle from his break with religious and moral seriousness, Franklin went on to encourage free-thinking. But Baldwin is careful to note that Franklin does not thereby dismiss morality as such. In fact, in response to his having viewed a woman

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in England try—and fail—to achieve the kind of moral perfection promoted by Christianity (the celibate life of a nun), Franklin endeavored the “bold and arduous project” of achieving moral perfection himself. Far from imitating the Englishwoman’s efforts, however, Franklin gave an alto- gether this-worldly cast to them: he sought to put her frugality to use, not in the introspection that leads to the uncovering of sin, but in the businesslike self-discipline needed to achieve this-worldly deferred success. His reorientation of virtue notwithstanding, Franklin too proved incapable of attaining moral perfection. But he responds to that failure, without a trace of guilt, by observing he was at least better off for having made the effort. He even entertains the thought that imperfect morals may lead to greater enjoyment and success in this world. Franklin’s new morality is forgiving, somewhat improvisational, democratic, and egalitarian. It does not ask us to be “saints or classical heroes” (Baldwin, 17). He rejects some classical virtues (courage), utterly reinter- prets some Biblical ones (sexual intercourse need not be strictly linked to the propagation of offspring), and connects most of the remaining ones to the securing—rather than the distributing or renouncing—of wealth.

Baldwin’s most important observation, however, is that none of this means Franklin practiced or preached a moral laxity, equating “virtue with whatever is in our long-term, enlightened self-interest in this world” (Baldwin, 19). This is, in part, because Franklin recognized that he could not rectify two of the five “errata” he owned to having committed in his life—and he regretted having committed them. Despite having advanced his own interests in having committed his errata, Franklin regrets having done so. There are, it seems, obligations we owe one another even in the absence of strict religious teachings on duty.

Baldwin then examines the criticisms leveled against Franklin by Max Weber and D. H. Lawrence to the effect that he promoted a dry, utilitarian materialism that erased all that was high or even distinctive about human beings. To the contrary, Franklin’s defense of the pursuit of wealth is premised on the notion that such pursuit teaches both individual virtues—such as self-discipline, moderation, a sense of justice and a “kind of courage”—as well as so- cial virtues—such as civility and the ability to get along with others. Nor does Franklin promote the pursuit of wealth as an ascetic practice (as Weber maintained). Its goal, rather, was “financial freedom and a happy life” (Baldwin, 27). And that life, for Franklin, was hardly narrow, selfish, extravagant, or luxurious. In fact, it involved both friendships and not a little participation in civic life. The latter, in particular, enabled him to “freely and generously . . . serve others” (Baldwin, 29). Such was the pull of civic duty, in fact, that Franklin ultimately left off his plan to pursue philosophy and science in order, instead, to engage in public service and politics.

Baldwin concludes by examining a certain mystery at the heart of Franklin’s life: he promotes a fulfilling and truly private life but fails almost completely to report (in his Au- tobiography) on what it consisted of. To some extent, this is perfectly understandable. Not only, as Baldwin says, is a private life “private,” but presenting one as a model to be followed would, on Franklin’s understanding, defeat the pur-

pose. If the freedom he sought to promote were to achieve its full expression, it would have to do so in a wholly unique, un-predetermined way. But, as Baldwin goes on to argue, Franklin’s reticence here may signify a certain inadequacy in his understanding—and his defense—of the private life. Why, after all, did he increasingly abandon the allegedly su- perior private life for public service? And might there not be a certain inescapable hollowness at the core of a “freely cre- ated” private life, the basis of which was an insufficient “se- riousness about and desire to possess not only useful moral and religious teachings but the truth about the meaning of our lives” (Baldwin, 34, emphasis in original)?

Finally, we turn to Rafael Major’s analysis of America’s greatest statesman, Abraham Lincoln, from the vantage point of the world’s greatest poet, William Shakespeare. Shake- speare, Major argues, not only provides us with the most appropriate lens through which to view Lincoln, he also pro- vided Lincoln himself with the core of his political education. As Lincoln freely admitted in a famous letter, he was an avid reader of several, though not all, of Shakespeare’s plays, “especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful” (Major, 3). Now, as Major notes, this preference could easily give rise to the suspicion that Lincoln’s admi- ration for Macbeth the play must be grounded in his sharing with Macbeth the character a “raging ambition.” But, charges of “tyranny” notwithstanding, Lincoln always acted constitu- tionally (as he understood it) in his efforts to save the Consti- tution and therewith the Union. While he suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, it is worth reflecting on the fact that, despite what looked like extremely poor prospects for re-election at the time, Lincoln never even toyed with the idea of suspending the 1864 election. In order to appreciate and understand Lincoln’s statesmanship, Major argues, we must not make the characteristic error of assuming that tow- ering actions can only be measured or judged on the basis of a grand, abstract, eternally present scheme. Rather, we must relearn to appreciate what Aristotle (and Herbert Storing, quoted in Major) understood as “practical reason” or the ap- plication of reason to particular, peculiar political difficulties in the absence of pre-existing rules of guidance.

To unravel the riddle of the meaning of Lincoln’s adora- tion of Macbeth, Major draws our attention to the fact that Lincoln’s favorite passage in another play with tyrannical themes was not any soliloquy by Hamlet but, rather, that of Claudius. For Claudius’s speech reveals to the audience for the first time that he has, in fact, committed fratricide to gain the throne. The question reappears: can one like such a speech for any reason other than sharing the speaker’s tyran- nical ambitions? In analyzing the soliloquy, Major points out that Claudius, not unlike Franklin examining his “errata,” recognizes both the wrongness of what he has done and the advantages that are its consequence. He is not an immoral or amoral man, easily committing the most heinous crimes for lack of any conscience whatsoever. Rather, he is a moral man, ready to look in an unflinching manner at the meaning of his having committed an immoral act. Nor does he, like Hamlet, come to question and even reject reason at such a moment on the grounds that it leaves us uncomfortably suspended be- tween two irreconcilable options. For Hamlet, reason leaves

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us irresolute; for Claudius, resolve means never abandoning reason. Lincoln’s admiration for the latter begins to make sense.

Major then turns to an analysis of Macbeth. He stresses the presence of the witches: insofar as they prophesize Mac- beth’s rise—and the first part of their prophecy is realized almost immediately—Macbeth’s ambition seems far more justified than if it had emanated solely from him. And, like Claudius, Macbeth does not shrink from confronting what he has done. He offers no hypocritical justification for killing the sitting, moderate, and decent King. And unlike Lady Macbeth, he does not seek refuge in drink. Remaining sober and undeluded, Macbeth commits the assassination. And after the assassination, Lady Macbeth (“reminiscent of young Hamlet”) counsels against thinking about it. He cannot quite follow this advice and, as Major points out, it is Lady Macbeth and not he who goes mad in the end.

Major concludes with a consideration of Samuel Johnson’s famous critique of Shakespeare’s apparent amorality. To be sure, Shakespeare avoids simply applauding the good and condemning the bad characters. Indeed, he goes out of his

way to make his characters morally complex and even am- biguous. But morality that is practiced on the basis of public applause can be paper-thin. The deepest morality may have to enter contentious waters and steel itself to widespread public opprobrium. But, in never abandoning a rigorous consider- ation of the reasons for its actions, such intrepid morality should always be capable—as Lincoln himself always re- mained capable—of offering reasons for his actions.

The three essays we have considered, taken together, offer an extremely helpful and penetrating introduction to statesmanship, its possibilities, and its problems. Balancing between conserving and innovating, between deferring to public sentiment and attempting to educate it, and perhaps most importantly, between taking morality seriously while recognizing its limited applicability in certain political situations, statesmanship remains an essential yet difficult to prescribe art. The essays are at one, it seems to me, in concluding that statesmanship is essentially the art of moderation, of keeping an oft-times rattled humanity from seeking, sometimes with the encouragement of very great thinkers, the (false) comfort of various extremes.