PRUDENCE, HUMILITY, & THE PURSUIT OF LIMITS

 The presidential nominating convention of the Republican Party in 1964 was in the Cow Palace in San Francisco. It was so much of a ruckus by GOP standards that the convention hall should have been called the “Stomping Elephant” Palace. Just four years after the presidency of the Eastern establishment backed Vice President Richard Nixon the Republicans were set to nominate a Westerner from Arizona, the irascible Senator Barry Goldwater.

As he accepted his party’s nomination Goldwater excited his supporters and dismayed his opponents with the now-famous line from his speech- “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Thus began a wild presidential campaign pitting Goldwater against the incumbent President Lyndon Johnson. Painted as an extremist Goldwater lost in a landslide.

Perhaps a bright spot of the campaign was the emergence of Ronald Reagan, the former actor and union leader turned conservative activist and Goldwater ally. In “The Speech” promoting a rendezvous with destiny just days before the election Reagan made an impassioned plea for Goldwater’s candidacy. Despite the landslide loss for his choice Reagan’s appearance propelled him to being elected governor of California two years later and president himself in 1980. Reagan had inherited Goldwater’s mantle.

Like Goldwater Reagan was also a Westerner, albeit a transplanted one from the Midwest. He selected as his vice presidential running mate George H.W. Bush, a transplanted Texan with strong Eastern establishment credentials. His father had been a Wall Street banker and senator from Connecticut, and Bush himself had graduated from Yale before heading to the West Texas oilfields. After Reagan completed his two presidential terms Bush was elected president and served one term.

While I am personally a fan of Goldwater, Reagan, and Bush, it was Bush’s political philosophy of prudence that has a more enduring quality than “extremism” or “destiny.” For example, President Bush ordered US forces together with our allies into an armed response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Following an intensive air campaign, the ground forces only needed 100 hours to route the Iraqi army. Instead of pressing on to capture Bagdad the US and allied were ordered to stop offensive operations and seek a cease fire which was successfully negotiated. Kuwait had been liberated which was Bush’s goal; nothing else was desired.

Although the Bushism “wouldn’t be prudent” was regularly skewed by comedians and commentators and even his manhood was ridiculed by some in the 1992 election, Bush’s policy of prudence served this nation well as opposed to the imprudence of his three immediate successors (including his eldest son). It is the purpose of this brief essay to examine the nature of prudence and how it has been utilized in formulating public policies.

 

Prudence has been traditionally defined as the ability to discipline oneself with reason and act accordingly. Classically, prudence is considered one of the Cardinal Virtues. Prudence is often associated with wisdom, insight, foresight, knowledge, judgement, and rational choice on a practical level.

Nevertheless, prudence has taken on a negative connotation in modern jargon. It has become associated with cautiousness and the reluctance to take risks. While the ability to forego unnecessary risks is a positive, if prudence is used as an excuse to avoid taking calculated risks it could be construed as over-cautiousness or even as cowardice.

While mere avoidance of action is certainly possible with an apparent prudent leader, I feel that if avoidance is the only trait associated with a leader then that person is not prudent and possibly not even a leader. Being prudent implies a leader deliberates and consults on the most suitable means to accomplish valuable purposes. Sometimes prudence leads to intentional inaction and sometimes it leads to direction action.

Related to our definition of prudence is the concept of smart power Popularized by Joseph Nye, smart power was initially utilized in international relations with broad application. It is discernment of whether to use soft power or hard power in given situations in order to achieve desired results. For example, a manager in an organizational unit wants to improve the performance of one of her employees. Her actions could run the continuum of informal chats with the employee (soft power) to placing the employee on a “job target” performance review. Power is therefore smart when neither of the power extremes are selected by default while either one of the extremes could be chosen if deemed effective. Prudence would be the foundation of the manager’s judgment.

“Life is a long lesson in humility,” James M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, once commented. If so in the literary world, even more so in public policy arenas. David Brooks reflected on the American cultural climate at the conclusion of World War II. Instead of boasting and self-congratulatory remarks about how great we Americans were, Brooks found a mood and quality of humility, self-effacement, and graciousness. Focusing on humility he adds, “Humility is the awareness that there’s a lot you don’t know and that a lot of what you think you know is distorted or wrong.”

I maintain that humility is the foundation of prudence. Yet that is not a quality we normally look for in a politician or a public policy wonk. Think about Bush 41’s manhood being questioned or what Winston Churchill once skewed an opponent, “He’s a humble man and has much to be humbled about.”

Turning again to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, it is noteworthy that perhaps the great antithesis to prudence, at least in American mythology, is the cowboy with the shoot-from-the-hip devil-may-care attitude. Goldwater himself was born in the cowboy culture of Arizona Territory several years before statehood.[1] Reagan, a native of Illinois, adopted the cowboy culture through acting in Hollywood westerns, hosting the popular Death Valley Days television series, and owning a ranch in the Santa Monica hills.

We can only conjecture on how Goldwater would have conducted himself as president. But we do have a record of how he campaigned for the office. In Florida, a bustling magnet for senior adults, he spoke against Social Security. In Tennessee he attacked the federal Tennessee Valley Authority.  He also voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Since he was as much as a libertarian as a conservative, Goldwater wanted limits of government intrusions in personal lives and government regulations of business. He would perhaps have removed American advisers from South Vietnam thus preventing escalation of that conflict. But it was unfair, if not deceitful, to portray him as being unstable in being too willing to use nuclear weapons as depicted in the famous count down campaign ad used by his opponent.

Reagan, in contrast, does have a governing record, first as a governor and then as president. While perhaps not prudent in his statements, he was prudent in his actions. In California, for example, Reagan reformed the welfare program in that he cut costs while at the same time increased benefits. As president he had three primary goals- defeat communism (“We win, they lose,” he told his first national security adviser.), cut taxes, and increase defense spending. And in defeating communism and taking down the Soviet Union he accomplished another goal- reduce the nuclear weapon arsenals of both nations. Reagan spent much of his presidency on these limited goals and was successful.  

Effective governing, therefore, is the work of an artist who knows how to use broad strokes and yet pays attention to detail. In contrast, the “scientist” leader is full of hubris about her “one size fits all” plan. That may work in a monocultural society with centralized authority but not in a multicultural society governed under a federal constitutional republic like ours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Some of Goldwater’s political opponents even ridiculously claimed that he was not constitutionally eligible to be president because he was not born in a state. This was not the case in 2008 when John McCain, another Arizonan, ran for the presidency. McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone.