The Scoundrel Theory of American Politics

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THERE have always been and always will be scoundrels in political life, especially one particular genus — the hypocrite — whose private behavior diverges from his public actions. But there is also a novel and ominous concept of the statesman emerging in American politics, most clearly in the gymnastic contortions being accomplished to justify support for the Senate campaign of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of Alabama: the politician as a disembodied policy array.

In this scheme, the candidate is a mere vessel for policy preferences. His or her character is irrelevant because the potential officeholder is to be judged wholly by the policies he or she will support. Even if campaigns accurately predicted the issues that will matter once the winner takes office, which they don’t, this desiccation of the role of the statesman in public life would be profoundly troubling.

Our shrunken concept of the statesman was evident when President Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway, suggested that it would be acceptable to elect a man credibly accused of molesting teenagers to the Senate because he would support the Republican tax plan. Mr. Trump followed with an even more expansive endorsement: “We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges, 2nd Amendment and more.” Lest she be outdone by her boss, Ms. Conway subsequently declared that “the president has tremendous moral standards,” the evidence for which apparently was that “he has said the allegations are troubling.” Nevertheless, Mr. Trump “doesn’t want a liberal Democrat representing Alabama in the United States Senate.”

The embrace of candidate Trump because he said he would pursue conservative policies despite his unconservative disposition also reflects this negation of the statesman’s role in political life. Nor did it begin with Mr. Trump. Liberals repeatedly rallied to President Clinton in scandal after scandal for fear of empowering Republicans.

Much of this may seem, on the surface, sensible enough. The denial of the importance of statesmen and their characters might be said to aspire to the elimination of personal whim and the reduction of politics to the objectively measurable. On this account, a public official is to be gauged only on public acts.

It is no surprise that politics, a realm of compromise and clashing interests, does not conform to standards of abstract rationality — nor should it. But a political act is a product of the statesman as an organic human being whose judgment is inevitably bound up with his or her character. Character is not reducible to private morality alone, but the person of the statesman makes an inescapable difference in politics. His or her character — that is, who he or she essentially is — matters. It is clear enough that each party knows this to be the case, for each asserts that character is important when attacking the opposition even while denying it when protecting its own.

That the statesman’s character does matter is true for several reasons. To elect a candidate is not only to choose incorporeal policies but also the prism through which unpredictable information and events will be assessed. If it were only incorporeal policies, it would not matter who the candidate was.

Another reason the statesman’s character matters is that American notions of political representation assign statesmanship an essential role in the constitutional regime. James Madison’s Federalist 10 says the representative’s role is to “refine and enlarge,” not simply reflect, the public’s views. This is particularly true of the Senate, which Madison’s Federalist 63 says must serve as a “temperate and respectable body of citizens” that delays rather than indulges the people when they are stampeding toward error.

This requires something in the statesman’s composition, which is the quality that thinkers from Aristotle to Aquinas to Burke have called “prudence” — not mere caution but rather a deep capacity for judgment that enables one to choose the most appropriate means toward worthy ends. This capacity requires not just reacting to events but also anticipating them. It is a product of moral cultivation, broad education and political experience and as such, it is inseparable from the statesman’s character.

None of this is to cast statesmanship as wizardry. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, an exemplar of prudent statesmanship who practiced it in both Democratic and Republican administrations as well as in the Senate, wrote that much of politics is about predicting “which relatively quiescent situations of the moment are likely to become political issues in the near future.” He continued: “It is no great feat. In a chess master, it involves considerable intellectual elegance, but politics is mostly checkers.” But checkers is still a game played by human beings. It matters who makes the moves.

Nor is the point that the personal matters more than policy. One of the ironies of the new defense of the candidate as a mere vessel for policy preferences is that it attaches to strong personalities who seem to attract support precisely for their charisma — Mr. Trump and Mr. Moore prominent among them. That is why the statesman must be bound by constitutional rules and customs.

Public and private virtue are not identical. Machiavelli showed that what is virtuous for the individual may be vicious in the prince. But that is fundamentally different from saying character does not matter at all or that policies may stand alone, disembodied from the human being who pursues them. Public virtue exists, and it is inseparable from the character of the person who exercises it.

This hollowing out of the personal role of the statesman withers political life. It denies the human parts of politics that connect us to one another. That is reason enough to reject it. That it might elevate Mr. Moore to an institution like the Senate is equally sufficient evidence of its flaws.