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In 1962, David Herbert Donald, one of the great Lincoln scholars, visited the White House and discussed with John F. Kennedy the way historians rate some Presidents as "below average" or "failures." JFK was scornful, saying, "No one has a right to grade a President who has not sat in this chair, examined the mail and other information that came across his desk, and learned why he made his decisions."
Kennedy had a point. But American voters have to make those sorts of judgments every four years, as they weigh the candidates for the nation's top job. What qualities matter most to us as we head into the voting booth? Some of the answers can be found in a nationwide survey by Reader's Digest of potential voters who span the political spectrum -- Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. To me, the results suggest that what we want in a President is not always what makes for a successful Presidency.Take the trait that our respondents said they prize above all else: politicians who "say what they mean and mean what they say." We feel that openly expressing and acting on personal convictions is a very good thing. But history indicates that's not always the case.
What if Dwight Eisenhower, the man charged with executing the Supreme Court decision to integrate schools, had stated his personal views in public? The fact is, he lobbied Chief Justice Earl Warren to uphold the doctrine of "separate but equal," which provided the rationale for keeping black children out of schools attended by white kids. He even invited the Chief Justice to the White House one evening, sat him down with prominent segregationists, and told him as he left, "All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes."
If Ike had used the bully pulpit to promote his private views, the battle over integration would have been that much fiercer. And if his views had prevailed, this would be a very different country today.
But the man in the White House had an even more firm belief: that America is a country of laws, not of men. Those invested with great power are just as vulnerable to the hobgoblins of conviction and consistency as all the rest of us. Greatness can come from not just expressing convictions, but from rising above them.
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