Turn Every Page: When our leaders disappoint us
How should we react to our leaders' moral failings?
The news is currently full of stories about Donald Trump and the “hush money” trial. Or, on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the “prosecutor who hates Trump is prosecuting him for nothing” trial. But whatever you think of Donald Trump, he was elected by your fellow Americans as the country’s president. And if we take issue with his moral failings—and it seems perfectly justified to do so—we also need to consider the issue more broadly.
Trump is not the only president or leader who has had moral failings. So, how should we react when our political leaders, or people who lead social movements, fail to live up to the standards of good conduct in our minds? What should or can we reasonably expect of them? Should we holding them to the standards of their own time, place, and culture, or do we hold them to ours?
A few years ago, cities and towns all around the country were tearing down monuments to historical figures who did not meet the moral demands of a certain group of people in 21st century America. Is that right? We erect monuments and memorials to leaders or historical figures based on the contributions they made to our country or society. There are small memorials, like a random plaque commemorating General Lafayette’s visit to a tavern in Vernon, Connecticut on September 4, 1824. Then there are larger structures like the Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore, and the Jefferson Memorial, where these leaders are forever honored.
But every leader had flaws. Many of the framers of this country—including the “Father of the Country,” George Washington—were slave owners. Washington’s biographer, Ron Chernow, calls Washington “[h]ardly an abolitionist.” Washington: A Life, at 439. One of Jefferson’s biographers, John Meacham, skirts the slavery issue for Jefferson by stating that “[t]he real Jefferson was like so many of us: a bundle of contradictions, competing passions, flaws, sins, and virtues that can never be neatly smoothed out into a tidy whole. The closest thing to a constant in his life was his need for power and for control.” Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, at 500.
It is true that none of us can be defined by a single word. We each have many roles to play—spouse, parent, religious believer (or not), friend, sibling, etc. So how do we evaluate someone’s constellation of roles and responsibilities? Should we give someone a free pass in one area because he is so good in another—should we say, for instance, that it is ok that someone is a terrible spouse because he is such a great business owner who provides well (monetarily, at least) for his family? Should an employer not terminate a substandard employee because she’s an excellent caretaker for her elderly mother? It seems like highlighting good qualities to revere while sublimating bad qualities leads to odd conclusions. It is, at least, an incomplete analysis.
How about presidents and other leaders? I started paying attention to politics during the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president. And when he was impeached in 1998, many people had to answer this question about leadership for themselves. In a time of great economic expansion for the country and general prosperity, people seemed to criticize him either out of a strong moral conviction, a kind of patriotic revulsion—really? in the Oval Office?—or to gain a political advantage. I can’t remember having strong feelings about it at the time; I was just watching the spectacle. But I was surprised at how long the spectacle lasted. News cycles weren’t quite as short in those days when the Internet was just getting going, but it seemed like the coverage quickly stopped being useful and focused more on ad hominem attacks.
But Clinton, like Trump, is a good litmus test. How should we treat someone who has moral failings who was, is, or is trying to be again the leader of the country?
This question came to the fore recently reading books about Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Both men were great leaders and were essential to the success of their respective movements. But both men were deeply flawed. Leaders’ flaws are often lost to history. People who are involved in the same movements as the leaders don’t talk about them much. Biographers often push flaws to the side to focus on the good elements of a public persona.
But to lose the flaws is to lose the man. Flaws provide context and humanize the leaders we talk about because we are all fallen and we all struggle with something. Perhaps the mark of a great leader is not whether they had flaws—we all do—but whether they overcame their flaws to be effective leaders.
Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela each had adulterous affairs with women. King “would work all day, go home for dinner with Coretta and the children, stay for sixty or ninety minutes, and then leave to go swimming at the YMCA.” After working out, King would go to an apartment “that King used to meet women, according to the FBI.” Jonathan Eig, King: A Life, at 270. King’s second-in-command, Ralph Abernathy, said that King “believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation.” He “had grown up in a time and in a culture in which adulterous behavior was commonplace.” King, at 271. Even when King’s relationships became known and threatened to hurt his work on behalf of civil rights, he told Abernathy, “I have no intention of cutting off this relationship.” King, at 272.
King was with up to three women who were not his wife the night before he was assassinated according to Abernathy and recounted also by Hampton Sides in Hellhound on His Trail: the Stalking of Martin Luther King (which I have mentioned here). How are we supposed to process that information? Is all of MLK’s work on behalf of civil rights to be disregarded because of his failures? Are we to completely sweep these clear moral failures under the rug because he did so much for civil rights?
What about another leader in another context around the same time? The same culture of adulterous behavior was present in South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s rise to prominence. On their sixth wedding anniversary, Nelson was in prison and Winnie had, only a month earlier, “invited her lover to live in the home she and Nelson had shared.” Winnie and Nelson, at 191.
Mandela did not hide his adulterous relationships, which he had during both his first and second marriages. See Winnie and Nelson, at 111, 114-15, etc. He fathered children with these lovers, and was apparently unwilling to devote himself solely to his wife. But Winnie did the same thing. She had a series of lovers while her husband languished as a political prisoner. Does it change your analysis of Nelson because Winnie engaged in the same behaviors? If Hillary Clinton had had an affair at the same time Bill did, would it have changed the narrative?
I did not know about King or Mandela’s extramarital affairs. (And you know it’s a significant issue when “extramarital affairs” actually appears in the index, as it does in Eig’s book.) And although I know that we are all flawed and have our own sins, these moral failings made me think twice about these leaders. It is difficult for me to square the pious and inspirational words uttered by someone who, hours later, is committing adultery. There is a disconnect there. There’s a lack of integration as a person.
In the Republic, Plato proposed the idea of the “philosopher king,” someone who had an integrated moral and intellectual life in such a way that he (or she—Plato talked about “philosopher queens” as well) would rule virtuously:
I said: Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils, —nor the human race, as I believe, —and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing.
Republic, Book V. It would be shocking to hear any modern politician speak clearly and persuasively about moral virtue, or to live a life where moral and intellectual virtue are integrated. And it’s rare to find a politician who has studied philosophy or the liberal arts in order to have a better understanding of what is True, Good, and Beautiful. Elections today often favor the person who shouts the loudest or lasts the longest. To the extent Biden and Trump have any debates before the next election, I can guarantee they will not include discussions of goodness, virtue, or the high ideals that formed our nation.
The philosopher king was Plato’s ideal ruler because he seamlessly combined moral and intellectual virtue, which made him able to lead his people to the highest ends and help them pursue the same virtue. Perhaps only in such a leader will we find no fault. And perhaps only with a philosopher king would we not have to have a discussion of trade-offs, choosing the lesser of two evils in an election, and the like.
Whatever our leaders do in their private lives, and however we judge their records, we should always remember that our primary obligation is to lead ourselves. If we take our marching orders from a politician, we have already failed at this thing called life. We should, rather, focus on developing virtue in ourselves so that we can lead our families and train the next generation to be better than ours.
Remember to turn every page. Enjoy your weekend. Please let me know whether you need anything.
Best,
Aaron