The failed policies of Florence, and the corruption and self-indulgence of its leaders, sound ominously familiar to us. A photo op, in other words. And like Clinton, their fecklessness on the battlefield is intimately linked to their own personal corruption and self-indulgence. No better description of Bill Clinton has ever been written, and no one, before or since, has so brilliantly exposed the connection between such leaders' self-indulgence and their inability to craft effective strategy. As Machiavelli stresses, military virtue is the opposite of these leaders' ambitions.
Military virtue is selfless, sacrificing personal ambition, even life itself, to the common good.
Leaders like Clinton and while Clinton is an extreme case, he is hardly unique are far removed from such virtuous standards of conduct. Machiavelli's point, which we ignore to our profound peril, is that we cannot have effective leaders unless we hold them to the highest standards of selfless virtue. Alas, we have done the opposite, and we can accordingly expect this president to continue to indulge himself, and to use our fighting forces as props for his own personal satisfaction. Machiavelli warned that the most perilous situation for any leader is to incur the hatred and contempt of his followers. Click here for an index of Articles .