The Bad Boy Who Wants to Be President Why Presidential Character Counts

Once again a politician is trying to reconcile his call for Americans to be good with his own reputation as a bad boy. We have every right to chide our politicians for their hypocrisy – as pro-Clinton Democrats spread rumors about George W. Bush's alleged cocaine use while pro-Bush Republicans call for an end to what Democrats earlier this year called the "politics of personal destruction." At the same time, we Americans must acknowledge our own ambivalence. We claim to respect Governor Bush's privacy while lapping up stories spreading the drug rumors. In fact, for over two centuries now, imperfect candidates have felt compelled to demonstrate their virtue to a skeptical public – because we want virtuous presidents but distrust politicians.

The ambivalence harks back to the Founding Fathers, who established an elaborate systems of checks and balances to protect the young Republic from venal politicians. Yet at the same time, the Founders wanted a president whose good character would embody the nation's virtue and redeem the Republic. The first President of the United States, George Washington, enjoyed a sterling reputation – and tried to preserve it by avoiding politicians and their petty policy disputes.

The democratic revolution of the 1820s weakened this traditional republican demand for a virtuous and aloof leader. Gradually Americans began to demand a President who could lead the nation dynamically and democratically, while also embodying the nation's goodness. The President, in essence, had to be both a virtuous king and an effective prime minister.

These contradictory demands have bedeviled presidential candidates since the nineteenth century. Many of America's best politicians -- most notably the "Great Triumvirate" of Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Daniel Webster -- were too controversial, too political, to rise to the president's chair. It was often easier to cast relatively anonymous pols as potential sovereigns, like that one-term Whig Congressman, Abraham Lincoln.

Presidential election campaigns, in turn, have always been characterized by an odd mixture of ugly mudslinging and noble speechifying. It is sad and ironic that the Founders' yearning for a humble and good leader has aggrandized the office, in feeding the desire for a king, yet also trivialized it, in justifying constant assaults on candidates' characters.

The scrutiny has intensified throughout the twentieth century. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal made the presidency the focal point of national politics, while John Kennedy's New Frontier cast the president as the leading man in America's emerging celebrity-obsessed political culture. Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal illustrated that character can be destiny, while Mrs. Betty Ford's candor about the First Family's private life – which coincided with the first revelations about John Kennedy's wanderings – invited Americans to peek into the presidential boudoir. Bill Clinton's New Covenant assumed that only policy fidelity counted -- but his tumultuous presidency has once again proved the importance of presidential character.

It is easy to dismiss today's focus on politicians' private lives as excessive, the worst of "gotcha" journalism combined with what Governor Bush is now calling "trash-mouth politics." Yet the presidency remains uniquely dependent on the president's character.

While the president's moralizing function is risky, it is an essential presidential weapon. It has helped Americans tackle central challenges, from defending democracy abroad to expanding civil rights at home. Faced with eroding party discipline, independent and often insolent congressmen, a suspicious and apathetic public, a gigantic and calcified federal bureaucracy, an insatiable and cynical media, presidents rely on the "bully pulpit" more than ever. And few presidential appeals are complete -- or effective -- without a personal aside that underlines the political or policy goal.

The presidency is such a personal office, and for all its resources, ultimately, such a limited institution, that it is impossible to divorce actions rooted in policy and ideology from the individual president's personality and character. Lyndon Johnson used his status as a poor boy made good to launch a war against poverty; Richard Nixon used his Cold War credentials to protect his right flank when he negotiated with the Communists; and George Bush traded on his World War II heroics when forging an international coalition to fight the Gulf War. In all these crusades, the various presidents blurred the lines between political power and moral standing, between personal and institutional authority. Neither the president nor the nation can afford to relinquish this powerful asset. The many calls for morality and responsibility Bill Clinton's aides had to delete from drafts of his 1998 State of the Union speech, delivered days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, illustrate how diminished a presidency would result.

George W. Bush has every right to demand a "zone of privacy," just as the Clintons did. And Governor Bush is unfortunately correct that much of the speculation whirling about him caters to our basest impulses, and to some of the worst elements of American politics today. But the question of a potential president's personal character also stems from our loftiest aspirations, from our search for a leader worthy enough to lead us, noble enough to help make our nation the ideal democratic Republic we want it to be.