Author Archives: Peter Levine

on sincerity in public life

There is obviously a hunger for politicians who speak from the heart. That’s the theme of Joe Klein’s new book, Politics Lost, which evokes the (supposed) sincerity of Bobby Kennedy in contrast to the falseness of today’s leaders. I have not read the book, but this excerpt is impressive.

I think Klein is exactly right that techniques for understanding audiences have become more sophisticated since 1968. The public “has been sliced and diced by … pollsters, their prejudices and policy priorities cross-tabbed, their favorite words discovered by carefully targeted focus groups.” People know that they are being analyzed, sorted, and manipulated (by politicians as by corporations), and they resent it.

At the same time, citizens have more information about politicians. All the public remarks of public officials are online and searchable, which makes them more cautious. In the name of “accountability,” pressure groups force candidates to sign pledges and then keep track of their votes. In this context, unscripted authenticity is especially dangerous.

But politicians have never been known for widespread sincerity. Lear, for example, imagines that Gloucester is a “scurvy politician” who “seem[s] to see the things thou dost not.” Politicians, whether in Shakespeare’s time or ours, are people who compete for favor. That competition is desirable in a democratic system. But it is abidingly difficult to win favor through straightforward honesty.

Furthermore, there are virtues of leadership that militate against sincerity. For instance, I think a full and honest appraisal of the alleged massacre in Haditha would be complex. It would recognize the extremely difficult position in which the Marines were placed, yet it would put moral responsibility on their shoulders (if they really massacred civilians). I’m not sure, however, that we want a president to lay out all these complexities. It may be better for him to state clearly that the United States has no tolerance, and makes no excuses, for murder.

Another example: I like rhetoric that calls us back to ostensibly traditional, American values of multilateralism and human rights. However, I couldn’t use such rhetoric myself in full sincerity. The United States has a long tradition of unilateral military adventures and human-rights violations. But saying so doesn’t call us to our best values, as good leaders do.

Klein uses Bobby Kennedy’s Indianapolis speech as an example of honesty and courage. Indeed, Kennedy took a huge risk when he broke the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination to an unsuspecting Black audience. As Klein notes, Kennedy couldn’t know in advance how they would react, and that uncertainty gave his speech an authenticity that is absent today. Klein is also correct that Kennedy respected his audience, which is the opposite of today’s manipulative campaigning.

However, consider statements like the following from the 1968 speech: “But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.” Was that literally true? Was it the whole story? Or was Kennedy trying to move his audience to support his ideals (and his candidacy) by appealing to their sense of their own virtue?

Kennedy quoted Aeschylus that night, calling him his “favorite poet.” If Kennedy really did prefer Aeschylus above all other poets, then he admired a pagan who believed that goodness lay beyond our control and that implacable fate was amoral. Yet Kennedy cited a passage from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in a translation that made it sound Christian. (“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”) Invoking divine “grace” was perfect for the occasion, but it was not what someone would believe who truly loved Aeschylus.

Obviously, that’s not a valid criticism of Kennedy’s speech. We ought to prize courageous moral leadership without making sincerity its hallmark. I suspect that we seek authenticity partly because of modern celebrity culture, with its public confessions and disclosures. We’re used to people who have nothing much to say but who are willing to expose their private lives and feelings. Most celebrities do not claim to be good, only to be candid; and the very fact that they are lying causes us to value sincerity. But candor is not the highest virtue for politicians. We ought to judge them on the content of their speech, not the fit between what they say and what they believe.

civic bankers

Otis White is nostalgic for the days of “strong and engaged local bankers,” men who worked their way up to become the “capi di tutti capi of civic leaders in most cities. … They ran important companies, but that wasn’t why they were powerful. Their power came from their continual involvement in civic work, an intimate knowledge of their communities and their occasional boldness.” (New York Times, June 1.)

I immediately thought: “redlining.” I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that those “civic bankers” of old helped to keep African Americans and Latinos confined to poor neighborhoods by refusing home loans. If that’s true, it should be part of the story.

Nevertheless, Otis is right that there was a positive side to the old banking industry–and all forms of commerce that are rooted in localities. As my colleague Stephen Elkin argues in a new book (Reconstructing the Commercial Republic: Constitutional Design after Madison), a free market always generates a politically powerful class. Perfect political equality is incompatible with the economic freedom that generates prosperity. However, it matters who holds disproportionate power because of their wealth. Madison counted on an agrarian elite, whose investments were tied up in land. Because they could not easily move their capital, they would have to worry about their communities and their reputations.

The same was true for banks in the 1950s-1980s. As Otis notes, “The law prohibited bank companies from owning banks outside their home states and sometimes even outside their home counties. So Citizens and Southern [National Bank] could grow only if Atlanta grew too.” Thus you could count on bankers for civic leadership, especially in dire situations like natural disasters. But today, “the top three banks in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Washington and scores of other cities are owned by companies headquartered elsewhere. (In New Orleans, only one of the top three is owned locally.)”

Even the redlining example illustrates how incentives have changed. Discriminating against minority borrowers was completely immoral and indefensible. It was also economically irrational, but it supported a community norm (racial discrimination). Today’s international corporations, with their mobile investments, cannot advance any value–moral or immoral–other than maximum returns for their shareholders. When a Hurricane devastates New Orleans, the banks’ best response is to take their capital away, not to help rebuild the city.

youth media

I’m still in Seattle for an academic conference on youth media. I’m struck by how essentially normative (value-laden) our definitions of “politics” and “civic engagement” are. Ask yourself whether the following behaviors are “political”? It depends on whether you think their goals are worthy:

  • Using the raw material of an advertisement to create an anti-corporate parody (“culture jamming”).
  • Providing free technical guidance to assist fellow users of proprietary software.
  • Organizing a petition to persuade a record label to give your favorite artist a new contract. (Does such a petition stake a claim of partial ownership to the music, therefore challenging corporate capitalism?)
  • Organizing a reform movement within a massive multiplayer game? (Is the virtual world of the game a public good worthy of such concern?)

    • taking back the culture

    (Seattle) Here’s a speech for a presidential candidate in ’08:

    “American popular culture is hurting us. It subjects our children to explicit sexuality and violence. It’s relentlessly consumerist and materialist. It tells the rest of the world that we are a nation obsessed with violence, sex, and consumer goods, lacking spiritual depth. Our movies and music are popular, but people in other countries regard them as low pleasures.

    “How did we let this happen to us? Have we not produced twelve Nobel laureates in literature, the world’s greatest research universities, inspiring religious and political leaders, and major movements in all the arts? Are we not the home to global religious denominations and the birthplace of the environmental movement? Why do we let media companies and celebrities define us?

    “Censorship is not the answer. Broadcast media can be regulated to a degree, but most communications have already moved to cable, DVD, and the Internet. The courts–rightly, in my opinion–will block most efforts to regulate the content of these media.

    “Censorship empowers the government to make decisions, and politicians can abuse that power. Besides, we don’t need to be babysat.

    “We do need to control our own culture. We can do that, to a degree, through our own decisions. For example, we can turn off the TV. At the grassroots level, people can act together to change their media consumption–for instance, by scheduling community events for prime time, so that kids have alternatives.

    “But the government also has a role.

    “First, the United States must stop carrying Hollywood’s water. Other countries want to limit the amount of US media that’s shown on their broadcast channels. Our government fights tooth and nail to remove those limits. That stance may create a few jobs in Hollywood, but it also floods foreign countries with media that depicts us in a bad light. The US was defeated, 158-1, in a recent UNESCO vote on preserving cultural diversity. We need to drop that position until our media companies make products that serve us better.

    “More important, people need help in creating alternative media that are more responsible, that reflect their best values. In public schools, we should teach all kids to make digital media: websites, movies, audio segments. Students will be supervised, so their products won’t be profane or violent or sexually explicit. The idea is to teach them how to make–and appreciate–responsible media. A public school teacher cannot lead a class in making religious videos. But students can use the skills and habits of media-creation that they learn in schools in other venues, including their religious communities.

    “Finally, we need to create a new model for public broadcasting. PBS, NPR, and the rest of the public system was created after Newton Minow observed that television had become a “vast wasteland.” He said that in 1961; the situation is worse today. But the public system is obsolete. Most people won’t give money to sustain programs on one channel out of 80 or 95. Public broadcasting increasingly relies on corporate sponsorship: advertising by another name. And it has become a political football, because people are offended when their taxes support opinions that they dislike. With Jefferson, they believe that ‘to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.’

    “In the future, public broadcasting should support a diverse range of voluntary citizens and groups to make high-quality content. It should supply facilities, broadcast spectrum, training, quality-control, and archives of raw material. Public broadcasters should not monopolize channels, but should empower citizens to produce their own media.

    “Nowadays, whenever politicians want to make something sound important, they connect it to national security. Well, the way we present ourselves to the world really is a national-security issue, for today the great struggle is for the respect of a global population. But even if al-Qaeda and other enemies went away, it would still be crucial to take control of our own media. We are not a self-governing and free people if we allow a few corporations to define our fundamental character.”

    [Note: There is much talk right now about where the Democrats should place themselves on a left-right ideological spectrum. But there are many critical issues that don’t fit anywhere along that line. Taking a hard line against corporate media is an example of a position that is neither to the left nor the right of the Democrats’ current mainstream; it takes us off in a different direction entirely. Republicans, too, ought to consider a positive response to cultural pollution.]