Personal Ethics, Public Virtue, and Political Legitimacy in Biblical Kings and American Presidents

I am here in two disparate though intersecting roles. As an American citizen, I bear my small portion of responsibility for the selection of our leaders. As a Jewish theologian, I am heir and custodian of 3,000 years of biblical interpretation. It is my vocation to apply the Jewish tradition to the challenges of daily life. At least as important, it is my responsibility to explain why some attempted applications are more appropriate uses of that tradition than others, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. We shall see that even in a religious age, religious and moral fitness is not identical with political legitimacy. We shall see that some psychological insights and moral judgments survive the journey through the millennia, but only when hedged with qualifications that are often lost in the pulpit and on the hustings. Such direct applications should sometimes be respected but always suspected. What is the meaning of "character" in the context of our discussion of ethical issues in the U.S. presidency? My instinctive response is to contrast a politician's character with his or her views on the issues. If holding political office is about seeing to the people's business, then one should choose candidates with a view to the results that are likely to ensue. To give precedence to other factors would be like patronizing a grocer or a doctor based on personality rather than the nature and quality of their services. I was brought up to believe that voters should make up their minds based on the merits of the candidate's positions. To care about the personalities of politicians was an innocent amusement, while to give weight to such considerations was frivolous at best, turning what ought to be a debate of consequence into a mere popularity contest, and an invitation to bias at worst, disqualifying candidates for reasons irrelevant to their competence or the rightness of their program. There would be something dishonest about such a vote, a bit like a teacher using nonacademic factors such as personal charm or family connections in assigning grades. Had I been a child at the time of the 1884 presidential election, to take Professor Dennis Thompson's case, I should have bracketed strictly all personal judgments and kept my eyes firmly on the tariff. In 1960, for example, my parents were not swayed by John E Kennedy's charisma; they were perturbed by his relative lack of experience, and they were very much aware of Joe Kennedy's anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, the sense I got at home was that it was wrong to make too much of these possible blemishes if Kennedy's policies were a desirable corrective to the course pursued by the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration. This kind of approach runs into trouble even in its own terms. What of a candidate whose positions are identical to mine but who seems unlikely to carry out his or her program? Is not administrative skill important? Persuasive ability? Fortitude in the face of opposition? Is there no danger that my candidate will so discredit the policies I believe in that they will become unfeasible? That even the wrong policies might be better, in the short or medium or long run, than the right ideas incompetently executed? Navigating these uncertainties is a perennial part of the voting decision. Many readers of this journal take the foregoing for granted. Yet those same readers would define "character" in a narrower sense, as relating to the candidate's personal morality. Good character is what makes a person good in private life: honesty, faithfulness, truthfulness, reliability, or courage, for example. The question of character in the presidency is how relevant the virtues of private life are in the assumption and discharge of the public duties associated with the presidency. This formulation, however, raises two new questions: What is morality? And what are the president's public duties? The first question is the more fundamental one; the second will be deferred for later. …