Heroes and Bathoes

It has been a long road from making the Enlightenment flesh in the Declaration of Independence to the worrying over the Army's risk of capsizing Guam. There have been ups and downs (Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Lincoln) but no one would make a graph of highlights or a few points. Still, the leadership from Wilson on has not been stellar. Roosevelt get points for not losing a war, Truman for being an honest human being, Eisenhower for building a road system and confidence, Kennedy for being inspiring, Clinton for being malleable, the second Bush for being steadfast but none of these qualities look good isolated on a resume or an on-line dating questionnaire. And none of the negatives are included. None of the goofy experiments, none of the immortal bad ideas. True, these errors have not been limited to the executive branch. Social security, separate but equal, the draft lottery, the federal pharmacy plan--all special little Edsels from their own little designers--all designed as products of our best and brightest.

Adams was not always right (see Sedition Act), nor was Jefferson (see his reason for not freeing his slaves) nor was Lincoln (see McClellan, for Heaven's sake) but the one quality that seems different in the more modern America is the scope of government vision, the state as seen from the government pinnacle. Reagan's appeal was his refusal to be mired in small fights, his insistence that the government was first a concept, a philosophical creation. Why one of America's least abstract leaders would be so correct in his assessment of this need is beyond me but others should understand and follow. This is simply a different country and, even when it is not, it still wants to be. Special interests, unions, abortion pros and cons, race, internal combustion pros and cons--all of these competing and haggling partisans--must always be the sideshow of the towering American Experiment. As much as these debates get under our collective skin, and as much as the new communications allow for dental drilling intensity of these debates, they are Lilliputian in comparison.

And any political leader who aligns himself primarily with these debates diminishes himself and will diminish his legacy.