Educating Democracy: Alexis de Tocqueville and Leadership in America

Chapter 4. Wilson and Tocqueville on Leadership and the “Character Foundations of American Democracy”

103 Wilson and Tocqueville Chapter 4  Wilson and Tocqueville on Leadership and the “Character Foundations of American Democracy” Many American politicians have peppered their speeches with quotations from Tocqueville, usually in a superficial manner.1 In the case of Woodrow Wilson, though, we have a unique example of an American president who can genuinely be called a serious student of Tocqueville. In 1883, Wilson wrote in his private notebooks that Democracy in America contained “quite the best philosophy since Aristotle.”2 Moreover, Tocqueville was one of six “Great Leaders of Political Thought” whom Wilson lectured on in 1895 and 1896.3 Wilson read and deeply admired both Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the French Revolution.4 With Wilson, then, we have not only an affinity between his ideas and those of Tocqueville, but direct influence as well. While Wilson’s admiration for Tocqueville has been briefly noted by other scholars, the intriguing connections between Wilson’s ideas and those of Tocqueville have not been fully explored.5 I focus this chapter on Wilson not only because his debt to Tocqueville has been insufficiently examined, but also because the role of leadership in a democracy—the main subject of this book—was also Wilson’s overarching theoretical and practical concern.6 The problem of leadership in democratic times was to have been one of the main subjects of Wilson’s projected magnum opus, “The Philosophy of Politics.” In his “Memoranda ” for this never finished work, Wilson wrote that, “The most helpful 103 104 Educating Democracy service to the world thus awaiting the fulfillment of its visions would be an elucidation, a real elucidation, of the laws of leadership.”7 In this chapter, I seek to shed new light on Wilson’s ideas on leadership by arguing that Wilson can usefully be construed as a Tocquevillian. I focus on Wilson’s complex understanding of the relationship between leaders, institutions, and the character of a democratic citizenry. In the “Memoranda” for his “Philosophy of Politics,” Wilson wrote, “See Tocqueville on the character foundations of American democracy.”8 In the same vein, Wilson declares in Constitutional Government that, “Self-government is not a mere form of institutions to be had when desired, if only proper pains be taken. It is a form of character.”9 Like Tocqueville, then, Wilson was convinced that the success of a democracy was dependent not primarily on written constitutional procedures, but rather on the character (that is, the habits and mores) of the citizenry. As Wilson puts it in the “Memoranda,” “Institutions are subsequent to character. They do not create character, but are created and sustained by it.” At the same time, though, Wilson believed that institutions are of the utmost importance insofar as they shape the character of a people. “After being successfully established,” Wilson writes, “[institutions] both confirm and modify national character, forming in no small degree both national thought and national purpose—certainly national ideas.”10 For Wilson, institutions and character are thus engaged in a complex dialectic. Wilson provides an example of the formative power of institutions in his discussion of France in The State: [A] people made democratic in thought by the operation of a speculative political philosophy has adopted constitution after constitution created in the exact image of that thought. But they had, to begin with, absolutely no democratic habit,—no democratic custom. Gradually that habit has grown, fostered amidst the developments of local self-direction; and the democratic thought has penetrated, wearing the body of practice, its only vehicle to such minds, to the rural populace. Constitutions and custom have thus advanced to meet one another. . . . Institutions too theoretical in their basis to live at first, have nevertheless furnished an atmosphere for the French mind and habit: that atmosphere has affected the life of France,—that life the atmosphere.11 Much like Tocqueville and Burke, Wilson often criticized the French Revolution for trying to impose abstract ideas onto political reality.12 But in this passage, we find that Wilson believed that the imposition of 105 Wilson and Tocqueville democratic institutions onto the French people did eventually succeed at producing democratic habits and a democratic character. For Wilson, then, character is primary, but, over the long-term, institutions can gradually shape a people’s character. Tocqueville also believed that institutions and character interact in a dynamic way. On the one hand, Tocqueville famously argues that character (or moeurs...