Being OBSCURELY GOOD
Last week I opined that Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the nation was the best of its genre. In both significance and substance it remains unrivaled, withthe possible exception of Eisenhower's. Wide-ranging in scope, it provides a worthy reflection on republican principles in general and political leadership in particular. Mainly, it demonstrates one of the central virtues required of a leader: modesty. Modesty in both person and aim.
Washington understood that holding power could corrupt a person, and that the desire for power indicated a corruption of the soul had already occurred. He embodied the republican paradox that those who actively seek power cannot be trusted with it and that power can only be entrusted to those who don’t really want it. He also understood that poor leadership often aimed too high, attempted too much, and had goals too vague. He kept his eyes steadily fixed in front of him, seeing the situation clearly and without comforting illusions. For Washington, the ideal had always to yield to the possible.
Washington did not avoid public service, but accepted it only when called upon. He provided an essential model for American leaders regarding the harboring of ambition and what a good life consisted of. The life of hearth and home appealed to him far more than did the courts of power.
Washington greatly admired Joseph Addison’s play Cato: A Tragedy, which Washington had actors regularly perform for the troops at Valley Forge. As he, with the help of Alexander Hamilton, prepared his Farewell Address, Washington reminded his young aide of Addison’s line “When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,’ the post of honor is a private station.” Plato had long ago identified the tendency of good men to want nothing to do with politics, but they would engage it when necessity required. But the more corrupt the politics, the less likely one could find honor in its practice. Washington wanted this dilemma concerning the prevalence of vice and the privacy of honor to set the tone for the whole speech. It both justified to the country his desire to return to private life, but also warned them against more unscrupulous leaders arising in their midst.
Addison's play concerns the life of Cato the Younger, opponent of Caesar and icon of republican virtue. Just prior to the above line in the play, Addison has Cato avoid the temptations of power in favor of returning to his native soil:
Let me advise thee to retreat betimes
To thy paternal seat, the Sabine field,
Where the great Censor toiled with his own hands,
And all our frugal ancestors were blest
In humble virtues, and a rural life.
There live retired, pray for the peace of Rome:
Content thyself to be obscurely good.That last line resonates to this day: the admonition to content oneself with a life "obscurely good" reminds one of George Eliot’s observation in Middlemarch that “… the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” Addison and Eliot both saw that the ambitious often set the world on edge; it is the "humble virtues" that set things right again.
Still, extraordinary times might call forth extraordinary virtues in otherwise ordinary persons. By showing themselves worthy they may win the trust of the others who are praying for some measure of peace. The word “trust” has different and related meanings, but in public life it largely refers to holding something in trust: an arrangement whereby you hold something for and in the place of someone else who is the primary beneficiary. Self-aggrandizing persons are never worthy of such trust.
A primary difficulty involves the person holding the trust using it to his own benefit or purposes. For this reason guidelines and safeguards must be put in place to keep the trustee in line. The two main safeguards would be to place your holding only in the hands of people you trust to make sure your interests are served, or to place legal guardrails that impose restrictions on and trust-holding and penalties for abuse. Even in tightly-knit families, wills and trusts are mechanisms for insuring that the interests of all the beneficiaries are served against the potentials corruptions of wealth. The trust holds your wealth awaiting its proper distribution, disallowing any one person to decide on the distributions mainly because that person will have an interest in them.
We likewise rely in politics on the rule of law — term limits, impeachment proceedings, criminal proceedings, and so forth — as a primary guarantee against the limits of trust. But Washington draws our attention to the fact that these parchment barriers are weak guarantees, and that a healthy republic will still depend on the trustworthiness of its leaders. The trustworthiness could be demonstrated, in turn, only when political leaders proved themselves content with a life “obscurely good.”
This is how Washington saw holding public office:
The acceptance of and continuance hitherto in the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this previous to the last election had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence impelled me to abandon the idea. I rejoice that the state of your concerns, external as well as internal, no longer renders the pursuit of inclination incompatible with the sentiment of duty or propriety, and am persuaded, whatever partiality may be retained for my services, that in the present circumstances of our country you will not disapprove my determination to retire.Washington provided us with a model of public service we have forgotten to our discredit but would do well to remember, and part of such remembering might well involve selecting for ourselves leaders possessed of humble virtues who are content to be obscurely good.
Washington’s modesty went beyond his aspirations both for office and for the republic itself. It attached also to his assessment of his own abilities. Leaders who do not admit their mistakes or, what’s worse, think themselves incapable of making mistakes, will lead people into peril. As bad as a leader who perpetually lies is one blind to his own faults. Such a person's vanity means they are not to be trusted. Washington again, but without a trace of false modesty:
The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. In the discharge of this trust I will only say that I have, with good intentions, contributed toward the organization and administration of the Government the best exertions of which a very fallible judgment was capable. Not unconscious in the outset of the inferiority of my qualifications, experience in my own eyes, perhaps still more in the eyes of others, has strengthened the motives to diffidence of myself; and every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied that if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.A remarkable feat, to think of leaving public life as the best way to serve your country. It’s pretty remarkable to think that our greatest president, in his 64th year, felt the increasing weight of years and determined that his ability to hold office had waned sufficiently for him to give it up.
Discussion Questions:
1. Think of different ways we use the word "trust" and what each one tells us about holding political office.
2. Should there be age limits on presidential candidates?
3. What are "humble" virtues, and why would "humility" be an important trait for a leader?
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
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