Ambition and American Politics
P. Schultz
December 18, 2011
In the past
few days, there have been several opinion pieces about Newt Gingrich as the
“front-runner” for the Republican presidential nomination. The most interesting
of these have been written by columnists who are conservative Republicans, like
George Will and David Brooks. And it is fair to say that these columnists have
not been kind to Gingrich.
While this
is certainly justified, given Gingrich’s capacity for making outrageous
statements probably intended to draw attention to himself in the best tradition
of narcissism, it is interesting to me for what it reveals about the Republican
Party as a political institution. For these attacks on Gingrich remind us that
elections are not just contests between parties, such as the Republican and
Democratic parties, but that they are also contests for control of each party.
That is, along with and perhaps even controlling the battle between parties
there is a battle within each party for control of that party. It is this
battle that leads some to argue, as I have done here, that at times parties are
willing to lose elections, want to lose elections in order for some to preserve
their power within the party.
For
example, Massachusetts is said to be a “Democratic state,” that is, a state that
is controlled by the Democratic Party at the expense of the Republican Party.
Try as it might, the Republican Party cannot, it is said, win elections. Of
course, this is not true as evidenced by Mitt Romney being elected governor and
by Scott Brown being elected Senator. So, perhaps, the Republican Party or
those who control it are satisfied with the situation because to change it
would require that these people forego control of their party.
So, behind
these criticisms of Gingrich lies the fear by the likes of Will and Brooks that
if Gingrich wins, he will restructure the power arrangement within the
Republican Party, leaving those like Will and Brooks on the outside looking in,
as it were. Hence, they now have to point out Gingrich’s all-too-obvious flaws,
making him seem like an extremist or a whacko. There is nothing particularly
“conspiratorial” about this interpretation and it reveals that most often, as
Noam Chomsky likes to point out, any interpretation that is “institutional”
tends to be characterized as “conspiratorial.” This is a way of drawing our
attention away from any analysis that points in the direction of concluding
that it is the system, not those who temporarily occupy its positions of power,
which needs reform or changing.
And this
brings me to my second point regarding Gingrich, viz., that he has been
criticized for being overly ambitious. [See a column in the New York Times
today by Bruni for an example of this. See below for the link.] The argument is
that Gingrich is overly ambitious, which points away from the criticism,
endorsed once by none other than Abraham Lincoln [speech entitled “On the
Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions], that the system that was created
in 1787 by the “Founding Fathers” relied too heavily on ambition as it would be
the characteristic that animated the new political order. “Ambition must be
made to counteract ambition,” James Madison wrote in the 51st essay
of the Federalist. And Alexander
Hamilton in the Federalist pointed to
“the love of fame [as] the ruling passion of the noblest minds” and intimated
that this passion, this love of fame – a kind of “immortality” – would
characterize the men who would be drawn toward the presidency as moths were
drawn to flames. These men would, if allowed to, undertake “extensive and
arduous enterprises” in order to achieve this fame, perhaps even undertaking
such enterprises when the public good did not demand or justify them.
Now, it is
easy to see without looking too far that such a passion makes for an ambiguous
foundation of a decent political order or of a genuinely republican political
order. Human beings of great ambition are dangerous, as the opponents of the
new Constitution pointed out is different ways. Such human beings could, for example,
make a nation war like or as might be said today “imperialistic.” And a war
like nation must, as we are constantly being reminded these days, sacrifice its
liberties for the sake of its security. This is said with a frequency today
that underlines how easy it is to undermine a commitment to individual liberty
for the sake of creating a “great empire.” [Another phrase found in the Federalist.]
But if we
focus on Gingrich and his allegedly over the top ambition, we can and will
ignore the more basic question of whether our political system is defective in
ways that cut deeper than the defects of any particular candidate or incumbent.
And after we do this, we then will wonder why our elections don’t seem to
change anything, failing to recognize that they do change some things, just not
those that need most to be changed. And I would submit that until we come to a
realization that ambition is at best a “virtue” of ambiguous value, our
political system and our politicians will fail us, even while seeming to be
successful.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/opinion/sunday/bruni-newt-gingrichs-self-adoration.html
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