The Character Factor: How We Judge America's Presidents

Chapter 1. Judging Presidential Character

Judging Presidential Character : 3         Judging Presidential Character k Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people who have the right to that knowledge and the desire to know. But besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge—I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers. — ,  InAmerican partisan politics,the character issue is most often raised with negative connotations to imply doubt about a person’s moral suitability for high public office.William Safire’s New Political Dictionary defines the character issue as“the moral uprightness of a candidate; or,a euphemism for an attack on a candidate for philandering.” He adds that the term is “almost always used in a verbal attack” that “insinuates a negative evaluation of a candidate’s personal background.”1 While the character issue often applies to a person’s personal behavior, particularly sexual, it is also applied to an official’s public behavior, particularly with respect to truthfulness and consistency. But the issue of character is much broader than these negative aspects of campaign invective. This book takes the character issue seriously. Too often in campaign rhetoric the phrase is used as a political weapon to impugn the integrity of an opponent. Op-ed pieces also use the phrase to connote negative traits. In the popular press, character is seldom used in a rigorous manner with specific meaning, though it often implies sex and lies. This book takes the idea of character seriously by examining several traits that are considered essential to the integrity of a person’s character: truthfulness, sexual fidelity, consistency, and promise keeping. Since these traits are widely used in judging presidential character, I take them up in order to put some content into them by being specific about how recent presidential behavior measures up in these categories. 4 : THE CHARACTER FACTOR The Importance of Character Presidential character is manifestly important.The values,principles,and habits of behavior that mark an individual strongly influence that person’s behavior, and the stakes are very high in the U.S. presidency. President Reagan’s speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, states it cogently, if excessively:“In a president, character is everything. A president doesn’t have to be brilliant ; Harry Truman wasn’t brilliant, and he helped save Western Europe from Stalin. He doesn’t have to be clever; you can hire clever. . . . But you can’t buy courage and decency, you can’t rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him.”2 Commonsense and popular-usage definitions of character include trustworthiness, fidelity, respect for others, willingness to accept responsibility , self-restraint, and compassion. The problem with applying the commonsense approach to presidents is that it is difficult to set aside one’s own partisan preferences and apply the same criteria evenhandedly to presidents of both parties. One problem is that the desirability of many character traits depends upon the historical circumstance. We admire loyalty, but should presidents remain loyal to old friends who, through their bad behavior, may jeopardize their presidencies, as in the Harding and Truman administrations ? We admire honesty,but should Franklin Roosevelt have been completely honest in his public evaluation of the U.S. economy in the depths of the Depression, or was it better to encourage optimism in the face of such adversity? Should Eisenhower have been publicly honest about his private doubts about the wisdom of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education? We admire consistency and conviction,but Lyndon Johnson did not get much political credit for sticking with an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. Should Richard Nixon have shunned a historic opportunity to open relations with China in order to be consistent with his earlier political principles?3 Presidents must make tough decisions when the stakes are high, and many lives may be at risk. Their reactions in such situations are based not merely on the expert advice they get but also on their inner strengths and weaknesses. The values and principles that they have internalized, their instincts and character, matter, as the following examples illustrate: Judging Presidential Character : 5 • Franklin Roosevelt’s optimism helped the United States weather the Great Depression, and his resolve helped lead the Allies to victory in World War II. • Harry Truman had to decide how to use the newly invented atomic bomb in...