IN THE years following Bill Clinton's assumption to the White House in 1992, the frazzled nerve ends of western optimism, vaguely excited by the prospect of ending nearly two decades of stagnation, stirred briefly but then lay still. One dancer does not make a tango. But Clinton's re election, combined with the impending election of Tony Blair as prime minister of Britain, will provide a moment of opportunity such as the western world has not seen since the 1960s.
Hamstrung as we are by existing logics, it is hard to say what this might mean, and political commentary has made little effort to define it. Because politics is locked inside its own cynical prism, attempts to mark out some "third way" between the collapsing hulk of communism and the limits of market capitalism have seemed to lack conviction or practicality.
Even potentially trendy alternative concepts like "communitarianism" are prone to the dismissiveness of hardened scribes and entrenched vested interests. To talk of idealism in the context of modern politics is evidence of foolishness; to talk of patriotism is to become a dangerous fool. The inbuilt cynicism of the system is reflected back by the voting (or, as often, nonvoting) public.
Among the most interesting recent attempts to break this vicious cycle is a book published in the US by one time US presidential hopeful and now Senator and writer, Gary Hart, in which he attempts to shade in the territory wherein the shift of the coming period will occur. The Patriot is, in both style and intent, an effort to rewrite the political theory of Niccolo Machiavelli as outlined in his classic work, The Prince.
In writing his book, Gary Hart has followed the Machiavellian map, using the same style of address, language, chapter headings etc, but the emphasis is different. Machiavelli's purpose was the creation of an ironic amoral realism by which to reveal what he called "effectual" rather than imagined truth. Hart's book is an attempt to turn this culture of politics inside out.
Machiavelli wrote that there is such a gap between how one lives and how one ought to live that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done learns his ruin rather than his preservation". It is not difficult to perceive this influence in the politics of many modern states, including our own.
From Machiavelli's Renaissance to recent times, Hart writes, "leaders have chosen to treat the people like children, using... fear and pity to terrify and satisfy". His use of irony has left the impression that Machiavelli's outlook was more cynical than idealistic, but this is a misreading arising from the passage of the centuries.
For Machiavelli, Hart writes, "cunning, deviousness and trickery were among the tools necessary for the prince to achieve his purpose of creating a nation state under secular authority and civil republican government. That was then this is now. The democratic leader, unlike the autocratic prince, is not separated from the people by class and position. His actions must reflect his purpose. He must not let a gap appear between his words and his deeds."
The age of pseudo transparency has altered the conditions. "Public opinion - shaped and reshaped by instant mass communications - has become a serious policy conditioner in democratic republics," writes Gary Hart.
The era of realpolitik, or pragmatic responses to ethical situations, needs to be re evaluated in the context of the unprecedented impacts of mass media scrutiny, organised vested interests, global warfare and planetary trade, which now come to bear on the actions of political leaders.
The context of Machiavelli's advice to the Medici family was the threat posed by external "barbarians" besetting the state of Italy. Hart emphasises that modern barbarians are homegrown, and span the political spectrums of modern states.
"They divide citizen from citizen and races, genders and ethnic groups from each other. They sever humanity's roots in nature. They squander our children's heritage and despoil the earth. They worship modernity's materialistic consumerism. They despise the cultural and civil institutions, including the institutions of governance, that have made our nation great. They seek to impose fundamentalist economic, political or social values on others. They deconstruct belief systems, corrupt social and cultural values for the sake of shock, amusement and profit, and sacrifice academic integrity on the altar of political correctness.
HART seeks to advise on how the original impulse of democratic society might be redefined and applied today. He distinguishes between the republic and democratic society.
Although it is difficult to imagine a democracy that is not rooted in the classic republic, he writes, "in general, citizens of republics have been inclined to delegate great expanses of power to representatives of propertied groups whether or not those groups actually represented the day to day concerns of the individual citizen. In many republics these powerful interests and their representatives came to constitute ruling elites and de facto oligarchies". Out of this situation has emerged the growing public cynicism about politics.
Hart fingers the central contradiction of democratic societies, governed by opinion polls, in which leaders follow the will of those they purport to lead. "Citizens and electors are rightly exasperated by a leader who too easily capitulates to their unrealistic, paradoxical or vacillating demands. A genuine leader is required to explain how democratic ideals can produce unexpected, unpleasant or contradictory results . . . Most political figures find paradox distressing and seek simplistic resolution or escape from it".
Moreover, a society's demand that its political leaders be heroes "contrasts sharply with democracy's pragmatic demand that the leader also serve as a social streetsweep". Hence, society desires a heroic leader to represent its highest ideals, but also demands from such leaders the pragmatism necessary to negotiate compromises. "These two roles are contradictory," Hart maintains. "Icon cannot, be streetsweep, and street sweep cannot be icon.
Gary Hart has abandoned any personal ambition to become either icon or streetsweep, but not the hope "that another might forge anew the bond of trust between citizens and leader". He proposes to President Clinton a new style of leadership, which he calls "patrimonial", denoting "both maternal and paternal inheritance . . . the entire legacy of a culture".
Such a leader would draw moral force from "belief in a contract among generations". The conveyance of a cultural, economic, legal, and natural heritage to future generations, he declares, "is a society's most sacred duty, and it presupposes a responsibility based, rather than a rights based, national ethic.
"As leader," he urges, "your greatest task must be to restore the collective moral sense of responsibility from the patrimony of future generations. This is the surest means of restoring genuine patriotism."