I have long admired the broad cultural perspectives and keen insights in the writings of Michael Ignatieff, former professor political science at Harvard University, who in 2005 returned to Canada and entered political life. He is now a member of the Canadian Parliament and deputy leader of the Liberal Party. In an essay in todays New York Times Magazine that contains several worthy epigrams,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/magazine/05iraq-t.html?_r=1&oref=slog… ,

he reflects on the differences in perspective and purpose of his recent professions:

"The philosopher Isaiah Berlin said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true. Politicians live by ideas just as much as professional thinkers do, but they cant afford the luxury of entertaining ideas that are merely interesting. They have to work with the small number of ideas that happen to be true and the even smaller number that happen to be applicable to real life. In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectuals responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politicians responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.

"Ive learned that good judgment in politics looks different from good judgment in intellectual life. Among intellectuals, judgment is about generalizing and interpreting particular facts as instances of some big idea. In politics, everything is what it is and not another thing. Specifics matter more than generalities. Theory gets in the way.

"The attribute that underpins good judgment in politicians is a sense of reality. "What is called wisdom in statesmen," Berlin wrote, referring to figures like Roosevelt and Churchill, "is understanding rather than knowledge some kind of acquaintance with relevant facts of such a kind that it enables those who have it to tell what fits with what; what can be done in given circumstances and what cannot, what means will work in what situations and how far, without necessarily being able to explain how they know this or even what they know." Politicians cannot afford to cocoon themselves in the inner world of their own imaginings. They must not confuse the world as it is with the world as they wish it to be. They must see Iraq or anywhere else as it is.

"As a former denizen of Harvard, Ive had to learn that a sense of reality doesnt always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of whats what than Nobel Prize winners. The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesnt. Yet even lengthy experience can fail us in life and in politics. Experience can imprison decision-makers in worn-out solutions while blinding them to the untried remedy that does the trick.

"Having taught political science myself, I have to say the discipline promises more than it can deliver. In practical politics, there is no science of decision-making. The vital judgments a politician makes every day are about people: whom to trust, whom to believe and whom to avoid. The question of loyalty arises daily: Who will betray and who will stay true? Having good judgment in these matters, having a sound sense of reality, requires trusting some very unscientific intuitions about people.

"A sense of reality is not just a sense of the world as it is, but as it might be. Like great artists, great politicians see possibilities others cannot and then seek to turn them into realities. To bring the new into being, a politician needs a sense of timing, of when to leap and when to remain still. Bismarck famously remarked that political judgment was the ability to hear, before anyone else, the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.

"Few of us hear the horses coming. A British prime minister was once asked what made his job so difficult. Events, dear boy, he replied ruefully."

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

Also by this author
© 2024 Commonweal Magazine. All rights reserved. Design by Point Five. Site by Deck Fifty.