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 No
job for Mr. Nice Guy |
Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but in the past few days, I've felt overwhelmed
by a tsunami of commentary, all of which purports to prove the fundamental
nastiness of Barack Obama or, alternatively, the deep unlikability of John
McCain. You thought our presidential candidates were nice guys, regular guys,
guys with whom you'd like to sit down and have a beer? Guess what, lots of
people are now telling me: They aren't.
Thus David Brooks of the New York Times has contrasted the warm and fuzzy Obama
on our television screens with "Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking,
tough-minded Chicago pol who'd throw you under the truck for votes." The Daily
Mail of London has called McCain a " self-centred womaniser who effectively
abandoned his crippled [first] wife." In recent months I've also read, or been
told, that John McCain snubbed the Vietnamese peasant who saved his life and is
rude to his (second) wife in public; that Obama abandoned his beloved church to
save his political skin and for similar reasons had some nasty friends in
Chicago; that both candidates " flip-flop" on the issues nearest and dearest to
them, merely in order to win votes. From whatever political quarter it comes,
and regardless of whatever merit it may have, all of this commentary starts with
the same assumption: The reader is meant to be shocked, shocked, that these two
men -- men who have submitted themselves to months of brutal campaigning, men
who have thrown their wives and families to the wolves, men who know they might
at any second need to abandon their closest friends -- these two men are not, in
fact, very nice people at all.
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But why on Earth should anyone expect them to be? In its wisdom, the American
nation has devised a presidential election system that actively selects for
egotistical megalomaniacs: You simply cannot enter the White House if you aren't
one. You might start out as an idealist, of course, and I would even give Obama
and McCain the benefit of the doubt here. I'm sure both are patriots, both care
about America, both want to make the world a better place.
But in order to become the candidate, each also had to make a series of utterly
ruthless decisions, decisions that most nice guys would find unpalatable. I
don't care what a helpful father Michelle says he is, there is absolutely no
sense in which Obama's presidential campaign -- or, should it come to that,
Obama's presidency -- is good for Obama's children. Neither is there a scenario
under which Cindy McCain, who always looks profoundly uncomfortable in the
limelight, is ever going to relax and enjoy her husband's golden retirement
years. Anyone who was ever closely associated with either candidate is now at
risk of unpleasant media exposure. No one who works for either of these men
right now has job security, and no one who knows them can expect any favors.
Think hard, as well, about what a presidential campaign truly demands of a
candidate. To become president, you must love talking about yourself: Talk,
talk, brag and talk, every day, every evening, on national television, in the
company of newspaper reporters, in every spare moment, and not just for a few
days or weeks but for years and years on end. If you don't crave attention, if
you don't long for adulation, if you don't, at some level, feel you are God's
gift to the American people, you don't run for president at all.
And yet despite the existence of this extraordinarily harsh, ruthless
presidential selection system, Americans, possibly uniquely among democratic
nations, do at some level expect their leaders to be nice. I'm convinced that
George W. Bush became president in part because he seemed nice -- refreshingly
inarticulate, just like the rest of us -- even though his former associates
often admit that he isn't nice at all. It was once said of Ronald Reagan that
his career proved the limitations of charm: If you turn it on for the public,
you don't have much left over in private. Still, the desire to be represented by
a nice person penetrates quite deeply into the American psyche. We "like Ike,"
and we like Jimmy and Bill, and we want our country to be run by the sort of
person we can call by a nickname.
Neither of our current presidential candidates seems much inclined to nicknames,
which is just as well, really. Perhaps a touch of formality will help us
remember that, whatever their many good qualities, both are self-centered,
driven, ambitious, calculating, manipulative politicians -- because they have to
be. That's what it takes to be president of the United States, and we might as
well get used to it now.
applebaumletters@washpost.com
The Washington Post
Tuesday, June 24, 2008; Page A17
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