[Peace-discuss] Why Are Great Men Not Chosen President?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922), was a British jurist, historian 
and politician; much interested in America, he was ambassador to the US 1907-13. 
The following excerpt is from his book The American Commonwealth (1888).  --CGE]

	Why Are Great Men Not Chosen President?
	By Lord Bryce

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 any one 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 to 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 striking 
qualities in the chair. Who 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....

Another is that the methods and habits of Congress, and indeed of political life 
generally, give fewer opportunities for personal distinction, fewer modes in 
which a man may commend himself to his countrymen by eminent capacity in 
thought, in speech, or in administration, than is the case in the free countries 
of Europe.

SAFE MEN ARE PREFERRED

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. Hence, 
when the choice lies between a brilliant man and a safe man, the safe man is 
preferred. 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.

A European finds that this phenomenon needs in its turn to be explained, for in 
the free countries of Europe brilliancy, be it eloquence in speech, or some 
striking achievement in war or administration, or the power through whatever 
means of somehow impressing the popular imagination, is what makes a leader 
triumphant. Why should it be otherwise in America? Because in America party 
loyalty and party organization have been hitherto so perfect that any one 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 safest 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; 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.

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

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. A nearer danger is a greater danger. As Saladin says 
in The Talisman, "A wild cat in a chamber is more dangerous than a lion in a 
distant desert." 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, in 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 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 honesty above all suspicion of personal interest, are 
the qualities which the country chiefly needs in its first magistrate.

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