I recently had the opportunity to
post a birthday greeting on a message board for Jimmy Carter, who, at the time
of this writing, is 96 years old. I will
always hold a special regard for Jimmy Carter, as he was the first U.S. President
that I ever voted for, but more than this, his personal character and integrity
did much to restore faith in an office that had been severely tarnished in the
public eye after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace two years before
Carter’s election. That was in 1974, and
for those of us Baby Boomers who had grown up in the turbulent 1960s and were
approaching adulthood in the 1970s, that resignation just tangibly reinforced a
general mood of cynicism about those who wielded power in this country. We who voted for Jimmy Carter saw in him a
sort of national savior who would restore our trust in government. It saddens me to see him regarded now by many
as a good man who was an ineffectual or unaccomplished president. I think that his legacy is
underappreciated. America had been
sinking into an economic malaise throughout the 1970s, culminating in both high
unemployment and high inflation, but President Carter oversaw the
implementation of measures that provided long-term solutions to these problems. He embraced deregulation as a means of using
market forces to reinvigorate stagnant industries, appointed Paul Volker – the
man who implemented the stern economic measures necessary to combat inflation –
as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and created the Department of Energy in
order to directly address the energy crisis that was also raging at that
time. The end of his term was clouded by
the taking of American hostages during the Iranian Revolution, but although their release occurred after the
inauguration of his successor, Ronald Reagan, the negotiations that led to this
were done by the Carter Administration.
In any case, President Carter was a hero to many of us when he was
elected, and for many of us – perhaps even more now than then – he remains a
hero to this day.
As I reflect on Jimmy Carter’s life
and career, I realize that there have been many times in the history of
civilization when somebody appears at a critical moment to solve a crisis, or
repair a long-festering problem that has grown to an unbearable magnitude. For those of us in the 1970’s, Jimmy Carter
was “the One” and, in more recent years, President Barack Obama was regarded by
many – literally – as “the One”. He was
elected to office in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great
Depression, and played a critical role in ensuring that those who were best
able to address the crisis could do so.
But, like Jimmy Carter, I think that he was saddled with unrealistically
high expectations by his voters, who hoped that he would not only solve the
country’s economic ills, but make great strides in healing more fundamental
societal problems, like the nation’s racial divide. Nevertheless, I think that he will be
remembered as one of America’s better presidents, except among those who were
and are unable to look past the fact that he is black. Other American presidents come to mind who
were perceived by many as national saviors when they assumed the office. George Washington had already secured his
reputation as the successful leader of the Revolutionary War, and the chairman
of the Philadelphia Convention that led to the drafting of the Constitution,
but as U.S. President he proved to Americans – and to the world – that a
national leader could be elected and peacefully transfer power to a duly
elected successor. He was the original
“One” for the United States. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt also comes to mind, having been elected during the Great
Depression, and later faced with leading the nation in another world war. (I exclude Abraham Lincoln from this
list. In retrospect, he was of course a
national savior of the highest order, but at the time of his election, he was
not considered as such, even among his supporters, and in fact his election was
the precipitating cause of the Civil War.)
It we look back into the farthest
reaches of the history of human civilization, we find that certain persons
appear at critical moments to repair, or reform, or even create new
institutions that will enable civilization to continue its forward
progress. Sargon the Great, the founder
of the world’s earliest recorded empire, had humble beginnings as the son of a
gardener, but after usurping the power of a regional king went on to unite the
entire land of Mesopotamia around 2300 B.C., and his method of governance
became a model for subsequent rulers over the next 2000 years. Even earlier, to the east, Menes created the
First Dynasty of what would become a long line of pharaonic rulers by uniting
Upper and Lower Egypt, around 3000 B.C.
Of course, while remembered for creating and establishing the world’s
earliest extensive civilizations, these men were conquerors, but to find one of
history’s earliest examples of a liberator, we need only move forward in
Egypt’s history to around 1200 B.C., when Biblical tradition tells us that
Moses freed the Israelite slaves from Egyptian bondage, and laid the foundation
for a new kingdom, with a unique and enduring monotheistic religion. Moving further forward, to the 6th
Century B.C., we come to the great lawgivers of Classical Greece and Rome,
beginning with Solon, who cancelled all of the debts that oppressed much of the
people of Athens, and expanded rights of democratic participation beyond the
more affluent classes of citizenry.
Although Athens succumbed to tyranny again during Solon’s lifetime,
within a generation of his death another great lawgiver, Cleisthenes, oversaw
the restoration of representative government and enacted further reforms, so
that he is known to posterity as “the father of Athenian democracy”. Like Moses, who had enjoyed a privileged
upbringing in the royal household of Egypt, both Solon and Cleisthenes had
aristocratic backgrounds, with power and prestige, but also like Moses, their sympathies
had turned to the oppressed within their societies, and they had taken upon
themselves a personal calling to relieve that oppression. And before the end of that same century, in
Rome, monarchy would give way to a republic, after the rape of a married woman,
Lucretia, by the son of Rome’s king, would inspire a man named Brutus to lead a
revolution overthrowing the despotic royal family. (Lucretia had died from suicide after her
rape, adding to the general outrage fomented by the crime perpetrated upon
her. Are we seeing an echo of Lucretia’s
martyrdom in present-day Iran, where the senseless murder of a young woman
there by a member of the clerical tyranny has led to a general uprising? The outcome of that revolt is at the time of
this writing uncertain. Perhaps what is
still needed there is a leader: their own Brutus – perhaps a female one.)
In the past century the world has
seen outstanding examples of “the One”. As
a young man, Mohandas Gandhi had studied law at University College, London,
earned a degree, and became a lawyer.
But after moving to South Africa, he soon learned that his degree, his
profession, and the wearing of European-style suits would not prevent him from
being treated with contempt and condescension by the whites who lived
there. While he had harbored sympathies
for the oppressed and underprivileged even before his move to South Africa,
these humiliating personal experiences would galvanize him into an activism
that would culminate in the liberation of his Indian homeland from the British. Decades later, in the United States, a young
Martin Luther King would witness the same expressions of contempt,
condescension, and discrimination that had inspired Gandhi’s activism, and he
adopted Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violent resistance in the pursuit of his own
quest for widespread social reform. Both
men died from an assassin’s bullet, but not before they had left an enduring
legacy to the cause of social justice and equality.
But what circumstances invite the
arrival of such persons? Often it is a
single galvanizing event, which highlights a growing malaise that has reached
the limits of toleration. In ancient
Rome, it was the rape of Lucretia that exposed the ugly arrogance of the ruling
monarchical elite, and incited Brutus to lead its overthrow. In the mid-twentieth century, the rise of
Adolf Hitler’s Nazism and its associated abuses had been going on for years, downplayed
and ignored by European powers reluctant to enter into another general war,
including Britain, until the invasion of Poland compelled a response. Britain and France declared war on Germany,
but of particular significance was that this, in turn, was the signal event
that brought Winston Churchill back from the political “wilderness” into a pivotal
role, first as Britain’s Lord of the Admiralty, but eventually as its Prime
Minister and wartime leader. Churchill
had warned of the Nazi menace for years, and is now remembered in history as
the hero who saved his country, and western civilization in general, from that
menace ultimately prevailing. In the
United States in 1955, the abduction, torture, and lynching of a teenaged black
boy, Emmett Till, by white racists, and the subsequent acquittal of his
murderers by an all-white jury, raised national awareness of the egregious abuses
perpetrated against blacks, particularly in the American South, and paved the
way for a re-energized civil rights movement that would eventually have Martin
Luther King as one of its most vocal and transformative leaders.
Often, it is not an outrage but a
general breakdown in some fundamental institution that proves to be the
galvanizing event calling for a transformative leader or hero. Such was the case with the Great Depression
of 1939 and Great Recession of 2007, which contributed to the elections of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama, respectively, to the American
presidency. The Watergate scandal and
President Nixon’s resignation similarly contributed to the successful election
of President Jimmy Carter. The rise of
the great lawgiver Solon in ancient Greece occurred when he was granted special
powers by his fellow Athenians in order to reform a dysfunctional government
that had regularly succumbed to the competing ambitions of tyrants. Sometimes a revolution that has already begun
finds itself in search of a leader, and if a person of suitable talent and
integrity answers that call, as George Washington did in the American
Revolution, its chances of success greatly improve. But at other times no such person emerges –
or at least no such person of sufficient talent, vision, and integrity – and
the revolution falters, and ultimately fails.
In recent history, this seems to have been the case with the “Arab
Spring” uprisings in the 2010s, and the upheavals in Iran in 2017-2018. There are of course worse outcomes for
revolutions that fail to find a leader, and that is when a successful leader
emerges who ultimately proves to be one lacking in character.
Such leaders put themselves
forward, of course, as saviors and liberators, but, once in power, they become
despots and conquerors. The promises
that they offer – to restore order, or prosperity, or former glory – represent
a Faustian bargain in which more is lost than is gained, and in fact sometimes
leads to general devastation. This
happened during the final decades of republican Rome, in the 1st
Century B.C., when a growing divide between rich and poor created civil
disorder, exacerbated by a Senate which pursued interests increasingly
divergent from the general populace. Two
competing military leaders – first Marius, and then Sulla – took control of the
capital city, and exacted punishing measures against the allies of the other,
including executions and the taking of their property. By the time that Julius Caesar had risen to
power, in the middle of that century, with a promise to restore order, the
Roman republic was dead, with the Senate a merely token vestige of
representative government. And while
Julius Caesar died at the hands of a rebel Roman politician (another Brutus,
although unlike his namesake, an unsuccessful revolutionary), the Roman
imperial government was eventually secured and permanently established under
the rule of his successor, Augustus Caesar.
A drama not unlike this was repeated in the chaotic years of the French
Revolution, when the mass executions which occurred during what came to be
known as the Terror were followed by the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. And while he initially brought glory, power,
and prestige to a renewed France, and fostered innovations in both science and
jurisprudence, his personal thirst for power and general domination in Europe
produced a succession of wars, ending in the humiliation of France, the
decimation of its armies, and the exile of Napoleon himself.
Caesar and Bonaparte are two
conspicuous examples of the dark side of “the One”. Each promised to restore order to a people
that had been thrown into a violent, destructive chaos by long-festering economic
distresses and the failure of government to address them. The promise of order, security, and safety under
such circumstances is a particularly effective means for men such as these to
rise to power. Others of their kind have
resorted to similar promises, generally involving the restoration of a former
greatness to their people. Initially,
such leaders seem to make good on these promises, until their actions lead to a
final, devastating end. When Germany, in
the wake of its defeat in World War I and the global economic depression that
followed a decade later, was left humiliated, militarily weak, and bankrupt,
Adolf Hitler promised to restore a former glory that would last for a
millennium. But like Napoleon, his
ambition to conquer his European neighbors, including Russia, ultimately led to
defeat and devastation. And here,
perhaps, is a clue to spotting the poison in the promises of leaders such as
these, who offer a way to bring back a lost grandeur, because the means that
they pursue often run directly counter to what genuinely made their people
great. Throughout the 18th
and 19th centuries, Germany was renowned for producing some of the
greatest musicians, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers that the world
had ever seen, but Hitler did not see its greatness there. Instead, he found it in darker places,
including Germany’s historical tendency to militarism, and its bigotry and
prejudices, most notably antisemitism.
One could argue that Chairman Mao, and now Chairman Xi, pursued and are
pursuing the same course with the Han Chinese, who have contributed to the
world a rich and time-honored tradition of philosophical and spiritual thought
in the East, and who have also been renowned for their entrepreneurial
acumen. (My roommate in college, who was
Vietnamese, used to tell me stories of his childhood back there, and how if one
or two Han Chinese families moved into a village, they would eventually own all
of the shops and stores in that village.
It was a back-handed complement, to be sure, but a sincere one.) The stifling, state-controlled economies of
Mao and Xi have all but destroyed freedom of thought and discourse, and have
dampened the entrepreneurial spirit that had once thrived in places like Hong
Kong, and still does in Taiwan today. In
their avowed aims to make China and the Chinese great again, the programs and
policies of these men have actually cut their greatness to the quick. For those of us who believe that the
foundation of America’s particular greatness has always been its diversity, the
promises of Donald Trump to “make America great again” seem to be grounded in
the same paradoxical pursuit of the opposite.
Rather than embracing diversity, he encouraged suspicion and even hatred
of potential immigrants, and condoned racial divisiveness as well.
Sadly, these counterfeit versions
of “the One” only seem to be generally recognized as such too late, after their
darker designs have been carried out, with great sacrifice, and their promises
have been exposed as illusions. The cost
ranges from a loss of liberty, to national shame and disgrace for violent,
oppressive acts perpetrated on innocents, to defeat at the hands of external
enemies, to widespread devastation and ruin.
It seems that it is a lesson we always fail to learn about these
counterfeit saviors, who, like the Antichrist of the New Testament, come with
promises of “peace and safety” but always at a soul-stealing price. Their programs involve the identification of
an enemy – internal, external, or both – that must be resisted, overcome,
utterly defeated, destroyed. And it
becomes increasingly evident that the counterfeit savior is at least as intent
on bringing glory and power to himself as he is on restoring the welfare of his
people. This presents a stark contrast
to those nobler incarnations of “the One” who usually tend to their own
missions stoically, and often in the face of harsh criticism and even dogged
opposition. Service for them is a
personal sacrifice rather than a means of personal exaltation. Of course, this does not mean that they are
flawless human beings. If one looks
closely at any of their lives, almost inevitably there will be some policies or
actions of theirs that are open to criticism, or reproach, and perhaps this
extends into their personal lives as well.
Their particular brands of heroism might be less regarded as such over
the passage of time, when reviews of their characters are subjected to more
modern standards. Even contemporary
heroes, such as Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi, had little or no
admiration for each other. But
particular crises call for particular heroes, with a set of talents and
qualities best suited to address them, and we should be grateful that sainthood
is not a general requirement, else their appearance would be even more
rare. The heroic leaders are simply
committed to healing a fractured world, with whatever talents they might be
able to muster, and in spite of the flaws and limitations that they share with
the rest of us.
I know that the standard response to musings like these is that we should not hope for, or look for, a hero of any kind to guide us, or save us, or remedy the most toxic ills that plague our society. There was a time when that would have been my own pat response. But over the course of my life, as I've surveyed the major events that happened during that time, and read about others in more distant times, I've come to the conclusion that at certain critical junctures, we need a good, enlightened leader, who will bring out the best in all of us. I have a sense that we are at such a critical juncture now. My hope is that in my country, as well as among the peoples of the world at large, the majority will be able to exercise discretion in finding, and supporting, a noble version of "the One", and reject the ignoble pretenders.
