August 28, 2023
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. ―H.L. Mencken
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Reproduced below are relevant portions of Viscount James Bryce’s chapter of this same title in his The American Commonwealth, 1888, revised 1914. Bryce, following in de Tocqueville’s footsteps, was a Scottish aristocrat and Ambassador to the United States who reported back to his European audience in great detail on what he found. His thoughts are included here not only for comedic value, but also with an eye toward the necessary qualities of future presidents. Bryce was do doubt correct that, after the founders, there were no consequential presidents save Lincoln. Or perhaps Grant. Reagan and Trump round out the triumvirate of significant American presidents. Certainly Eisenhower stands apart and is vastly underappreciated by historians. One who understood him well, Nixon,1 realized the profound respect Eisenhower carried across the international stage in the post-war realm and credited him with being responsible for shaping the modern order. Eisenhower’s humility masked his profundity. He was profound because he was humble. Said differently, he had no psychic need to broadcast his accomplishments as the greatest military commander in history. The comparison with Washington’s stature is both similar and obvious.
Readers might profitably consult Jerzy Kosinski's 1979 film Being There for Peter Sellers’ profound portrayal of an illiterate and sufficiently vapid potential presidential candidate. “There is something likable about Chance. His absence of internal weight makes him a man truly at peace.”
Applying Bryce’s considerations, alongside those of Mencken, leads to the conclusion that Biden was the epitome of presidential candidates, the standard by which all future contenders will be compared. In every consideration, except hailing from a populous state, Biden represented presidential perfection. The vapidity, narcissism and senility2 only added to his appeal to party bosses.3 Bryce failed to give due consideration to the degree to which a president can be controlled by hidden actors, especially through the use of blackmail. In Biden’s case this was yet more icing on the cake. His facility with fabrication and unfamiliarity with the truth will probably never be equaled among American presidents.
Bryce’s observations are also especially relevant to Trump, the “brilliant man” standing as the antithesis of the “safe man” normally desired. In contrast to candidates who do not leave a wake, Trump attracted enemies like flies. Mediocrities do not present such dilemmas to party captains. Only rarely does a president arrive who seems larger than the office. Reagan was the last one prior to Trump to sit tall in the saddle. Parties (and the vast constituencies they represent, economic and otherwise) seek someone they can control, not a man who would control them. The best candidates are those with skeletons in their closets and susceptible to control through blackmail. Bryce’s analysis has stood the test of time. It becomes particularly useful when applied to divining Obama’s criteria for selecting Biden as his running mate, a subject to be discussed elsewhere.
The key word in Bryce’s title is “chosen.” Voters rarely have an opportunity to vote for candidates advanced fully independent of the party system. Public officials are too often selected by party machines, rather than choosing the best possible individuals. Think of it as affirmative action for politicians — people are promoted not on merit, but on the basis of other criteria, including race, gender and ethnicity. In those rare instances when honest candidates somehow surmount the obstacles imposed by the parties, voters typically flock to them. If there is one constant Americans agree on, it is that the system is rigged. Party affiliations do not matter to voters if the candidate is perceived as honest. The role money plays in promoting inferior individuals, and blocking superior ones, is often determinative. It is the rare combination of superiority and the ability to largely self-fund a campaign4 that occurs far too infrequently. In Trump’s case, in part due to his genius in obtaining free publicity, his 2016 campaign was able to be run on essentially a shoestring budget when compared to his establishment opponent. An excess of money often does more harm than good to a candidate. Witness the disastrous results of the billionaire class’ chosen Trump opponent for the 2024 Republican nomination — Florida Governor Desantis. A deeply flawed candidate, not ready for the national spotlight, was only undermined by the inane tactics of his overpriced, grifting advisors.
Why Great Men Are Not Chosen Presidents
Europeans often ask, and Americans do not always explain, how it happens that this great office, the greatest in the world, unless we except the papacy, to which anyone can rise by his own merits, is not more frequently filled by great and striking men. In America, which is beyond all other countries the country of a “career open to talents,” a country, moreover, in which political life is unusually keen and political ambition widely diffused, it might be expected that the highest place would always be won by a man of brilliant gifts. But from the time when the heroes of the Revolution died out with Jefferson and Adams and Madison, no person except General Grant, had, down till the end of last century, reached the chair whose name would have been remembered had he not been president, and no president except Abraham Lincoln had displayed rare or striking qualities in the chair. Who now knows or cares to know anything about the personality of James K. Polk or Franklin Pierce? The only thing remarkable about them is that being so commonplace they should have climbed so high.
Several reasons may be suggested for the fact, which Americans are themselves the first to admit. One is that the proportion of first-rate ability drawn into politics is smaller in America than in most European countries. This is a phenomenon whose causes must be elucidated later: . . .
A third reason is that eminent men make more enemies, and give those enemies more assailable points, than obscure men do. They are therefore in so far less desirable candidates. It is true that the eminent man has also made more friends, that his name is more widely known, and may be greeted with louder cheers. Other things being equal, the famous man is preferable. But other things never are equal. The famous man has probably attacked some leaders in his own party, has supplanted others, has expressed his dislike to the crotchet of some active section, has perhaps committed errors which are capable of being magnified into offences. No man stands long before the public and bears a part in great affairs without giving openings to censorious criticism. Fiercer far than the light which beats upon a throne is the light which beats upon a presidential candidate, searching out all the recesses of his past life.5 Hence, when the choice lies between a brilliant man and a safe man, the safe man is preferred.6 Party feeling, strong enough to carry in on its back a man without conspicuous positive merits, is not always strong enough to procure forgiveness for a man with positive faults.7
. . . in America party loyalty and party organization have been hitherto so perfect that anyone put forward by the party will get the full party vote if his character is good and his “record,” as they call it, unstained. The safe candidate may not draw in quite so many votes from the moderate men of the other side as the brilliant one would, but he will not lose nearly so many from his own ranks. Even those who admit his mediocrity will vote straight when the moment for voting comes. Besides, the ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He has a lower conception of the qualities requisite to make a statesman than those who direct public opinion in Europe have. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls “magnetic,” and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge. Candidates are selected to be run for nomination by knots of persons who, however expert as party tacticians, are usually commonplace men;8 and the choice between those selected for nomination is made by a very large body, an assembly of nearly a thousand delegates from the local party organizations over the country, who are certainly no better than ordinary citizens. How this process works will be seen more fully when I come to speak of those nominating conventions which are so notable a feature in American politics.
It must also be remembered that the merits of a president are one thing and those of a candidate another thing. An eminent American is reported to have said to friends who wished to put him forward, “Gentlemen, let there be no mistake. I should make a good president, but a very bad candidate.” Now to a party it is more important that its nominee should be a good candidate than that he should turn out a good president. . . .
It will be a misfortune to the party, as well as to the country, if the candidate elected should prove a bad president. But it is a greater misfortune to the party that it should be beaten in the impending election, for the evil of losing national patronage will have come four years sooner. “B” (so reason the leaders), “who is one of our possible candidates, may be an abler man than A, who is the other. But we have a better chance of winning with A than with B, while X, the candidate of our opponents, is anyhow no better than A. We must therefore run A.” This reasoning is all the more forcible because the previous career of the possible candidates has generally made it easier to say who will succeed as a candidate than who will succeed as a president; and because the wire-pullers with whom the choice rests are better judges of the former question than of the latter.
After all, too, a president need not be a man of brilliant intellectual gifts. His main duties are to be prompt and firm in securing the due execution of the laws and maintaining the public peace, careful and upright in the choice of the executive officials of the country. Eloquence, whose value is apt to be overrated in all free countries, imagination, profundity of thought or extent of knowledge, are all in so far a gain to him that they make him “a bigger man,” and help him to gain a greater influence over the nation, an influence which, if he be a true patriot, he may use for its good. But they are not necessary for the due discharge in ordinary times of the duties of his post. Four-fifths of his work is the same in kind as that which devolves on the chairman of a commercial company or the manager of a railway, the work of choosing good subordinates, seeing that they attend to their business, and taking a sound practical view of such administrative questions as require his decision. Firmness, common sense, and most of all, honesty, an honesty9 above all suspicion of personal interest, are the qualities which the country chiefly needs in its chief magistrate.
So far we have been considering personal merits. But in the selection of a candidate many considerations have to be regarded besides personal merits, whether of a candidate, or of a possible president. The chief of these considerations is the amount of support which can be secured from different states or from different “sections” of the Union, a term by which the Americans denote groups of states with a broad community of interest. State feeling and sectional feeling are powerful factors in a presidential election. The Middle West and Northwest, including the states from Ohio to Montana, is now the most populous section of the Union, and therefore counts for most in an election. It naturally conceives that its interests will be best protected by one who knows them from birth and residence. Hence prima facie a man from that section makes the best candidate. A large state casts a heavier vote in the election; and every state is of course more likely to be carried by one of its own children than by a stranger, because his fellow citizens, while they feel honoured by the choice, gain also a substantial advantage, having a better prospect of such favours as the administration can bestow. Hence, cœteris paribus,10 a man from a large state is preferable as a candidate. The problem is further complicated by the fact that some states are already safe for one or other party, while others are doubtful. The Northwestern and New England states have usually tended to go Republican; while nearly all of the Southern states have, since 1877, been pretty certain to go Democratic. Cœteris paribus, a candidate from a doubtful state, such as New York or Indiana have usually been, is to be preferred.
Other minor disqualifying circumstances require less explanation. A Roman Catholic, or an avowed disbeliever in Christianity, would be an undesirable candidate. For many years after the Civil War, anyone who had fought, especially if he fought with distinction, in the Northern army, enjoyed great advantages, for the soldiers of that army rallied to his name. The two elections of General Grant, who knew nothing of politics, and the fact that his influence survived the faults of his long administration, are evidence of the weight of this consideration.11
Long ago on a railway journey in the Far West I fell in with two newspapermen from the state of Indiana, who were taking their holiday. The conversation turned on the next presidential election. They spoke hopefully of the chances for nomination by their party of an Indiana man, a comparatively obscure person, whose name I had never heard. I expressed some surprise that he should be thought of. They observed that he had done well in state politics, that there was nothing against him, that Indiana would work for him. “But,” I rejoined, “ought you not to have a man of more commanding character? There is Senator A. Everybody tells me that he is the shrewdest and most experienced man in your party, and that he has a perfectly clean record. Why not run him?” “Why, yes,” they answered, “that is all true. But you see he comes from a small state, and we have got that state already. Besides, he wasn’t in the war. Our man was. Indiana’s vote is worth having, and if our man is run, we can carry Indiana.” . . .
These secondary considerations do not always prevail. Intellectual ability and strength of character12 must influence the choice of a candidate. When a man has once impressed himself on the nation by force, courage, and rectitude, the influence of those qualities may be decisive. They naturally count for more when times are critical. Reformers declare that their weight will go on increasing as the disgust of good citizens with the methods of professional politicians increases. But for many generations past it is not the greatest men in the Roman Church that have been chosen popes,13 nor the most brilliant men in the Anglican Church that have been appointed archbishops of Canterbury.
Although several presidents have survived their departure from office by many years, only two, John Quincy Adams14 and recently Mr. Roosevelt, have played a part in politics after quitting15 the White House. It may be that the ex-president has not been a great leader before his accession to office; it may be that he does not care to exert himself after he has held and dropped the great prize, and found (as most have found) how little of a prize it is.16
Something, however, must also be ascribed to other features of the political system of the country. It is often hard to find a vacancy in the representation of a given state through which to reenter Congress; it is disagreeable to recur to the arts by which seats are secured. Past greatness is rather an encumbrance than a help to resuming a political career. Exalted power, on which the unsleeping eye of hostile critics was fixed, has probably disclosed all a president’s weaknesses, and has either forced him to make enemies by disobliging adherents, or exposed him to censure for subservience to party interests. He is regarded as having had his day; he belongs already to the past, and unless, like Grant, he is endeared to the people by the memory of some splendid service, or is available to his party as a possible candidate for a further term of office, he may sink into the crowd or avoid neglect by retirement.17 Possibly he may deserve to be forgotten; but more frequently he is a man of sufficient ability and character to make the experience he has gained valuable to the country, could it be retained in a place where he might turn it to account. They managed things better at Rome, gathering into their Senate all the fame and experience, all the wisdom and skill, of those who had ruled and fought as consuls and prætors at home and abroad.
We may now answer the question from which we started. Great men have not often been chosen presidents, first because great men are rare in politics; secondly, because the method of choice does not bring them to the top; thirdly, because they are not, in quiet times, absolutely needed.
The profundity of a president is in proportion to the energy expended to remove him. Nixon was certainly positioned near the profound pole and therefore forced out in a silent coup orchestrated by the CIA, after JFK was less delicately removed. In the modern technological era, with electronic communications allowing for both spying on the citizenry and control of the public discourse through censoring and propaganda, there is little need for violent assassinations. The same ends can now be accomplished by more refined means.
Not to mention his two 1988 brain aneurysms and associated surgery.
Party bosses are of course figureheads, employed by the Money interests (domestic and foreign) to do their bidding.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, worth tens of billions of dollars, squandered $1,119,411,494.07 in his 2020 self-funded presidential quest, running in the Democratic primaries, without securing a single delegate vote. Trump’s 2016 victory deluded various narcissistic celebrities and billionaires into believing they were presidential material. It was remarkable to observe a number of self-infatuated celebrities who convinced themselves that if Trump could do it, they could do it.
It is remarkable this was written in the 19th Century, when the ability to research a man’s history and promulgate the facts (or lies) was far more difficult.
The safest man (for political bosses) is therefore one with no record. Obama largely fit this description, and what little background he had was submerged as much as possible. Jimmy Carter was another example.
Such as Trump.
Is there anyone on the RNC or DNC who is not a hack, a mediocrity? Money is the common denominator which binds them.
This might be true in a perfect world, but in the political realm the truth must often be avoided at all costs. Bryce was insufficiently cynical. In a late-stage democracy, dishonesty is mandatory for any candidate seeking approval from party bosses. A man who can not be blackmailed represents a threat to those pulling the strings. Yet Bryce is correct that above all else, the one trait to be desired in any politician is honesty, albeit rarely encountered.
other things being equal
Similar considerations applied to Eisenhower.
Again, in a late-stage democracy such attributes are deficits as far as party bosses are concerned.
Readers might consider applying Bryce’s criteria to papal selections, especially Pope Francis. Is survival of the church his paramount objective, or is it something else? Was Francis part of a Trojan horse of communist priests long ago infiltrated into Catholicism to undermine it from the inside? Although certain aspects of Oswald Spengler’s paradigm are avoided here as extraneous to our focus (including his concept of the second religiousness), it is clear the Catholic branch of Christianity is ripe for a reformation, if not replacement by a revived, dynamic movement. For those attuned to the nuances of societal transitions, signs of a nascent second religiousness are becoming increasingly apparent, including the box office success of The Sound of Freedom. Newt Gingrich speculated the movie may eventually come to have a similar impact as did a great American novel:
The novel which set the stage for the Civil War, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” had an amazingly emotional scene in which Eliza escapes across the half-frozen Ohio River. . . . The emotional power of the scene moved millions toward support for abolition of slavery. The book was so powerful that when its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, met President Lincoln he said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Just like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Sound of Freedom” carries a large emotional truth in a story about real people. It is true morally and in historic terms.
Original footnote: “J. Q. Adams was elected to the House of Representatives within three years from his presidency, and there became for seventeen years the fearless and formidable advocate of what may be called the national theory of the Constitution against the Slaveholders.”
Note the choice of verbs. This was prior to FDR, when presidents voluntarily limited themselves to two terms, the honorable thing to do. The terms honor and president no longer appear together frequently.
The almost total withdrawal from post-presidential public life by George W. Bush underscored how much of a caretaker role he had played. Selected by party bosses, with Cheney appointed as his taxpayer-funded guardian ad litem, the military/industrial complex prospered on his watch as “democracy” was force-fed into distant lands and the nation turned into a wholesale surveillance state at home. In contrast, Eisenhower withdrew from public life after his term of office because of his humility and desire to grant space to his successor. He was a great man before, and an even greater one after two presidential terms were added to his resume. Clinton, in contrast, was extraordinarily active after his term, in pursuit of global obscene profits.
Taft was an exception to the rule, going on to serve as Chief Justice after his presidency. John Quincy Adams (perhaps the highest IQ president) went on to serve nine terms in the House of Representatives after his single presidential term. The Bush family presidential dynasty was a far cry from the Adams family dynasty.