In the last post, I said, “We bemoan a cult of personality, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Unless integrity is desirable and not just what is right, something more interesting will take its place.” Since then, a conservative scholar of note said much the same thing in language of praise more exclusively partisan: “Trump’s impressive wins are the fruit not of mere luck, nor even of his extraordinary energy, but of his even more extraordinary political astuteness. If the American Right is to continue to succeed after Donald Trump has left the scene, it will have to learn the secrets of his success.”
The conservative movement relied too much on a culture “war of ideas” and got lost defending their principles. Plato taught that “spiritedness is the seat of anger, affection or love of one’s own, and love of honor”—passions that play a decisive role in political life. “Proper attention to spiritedness, especially in an electoral democracy, means waging not only a ‘war of ideas’ but also a ‘war of emotions.'”
Liberals and conservatives could agree that ancient wisdom did not split up the good, true, and beautiful: what is good is desirable, not just true; what is true is desirable, not just “good.” Presidents as different as Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Barack Obama showed as much. Some would call it conniving. Still, each found ways to make their intellectual frameworks resonate with Americans’ hopes and practical needs, showing that effective leadership requires substantive ideas and emotional intelligence to make those ideas matter to ordinary citizens.
It is too low a view of politics to think it is driven entirely by emotion and self-interest, but it is too high a view to believe that good ideas and reasoned arguments are the keys to successful politics. It takes all these forces together to win public support and shape a path to the common good.
Cultural critic H.L. Mencken said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Today, conservatives on the New Right say instead, “To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice”—usually meaning the Heartland is smarter than the East Coast. Citizens’ wisdom and voices also explained the enthusiasm that elected the probably worst president in American history: Warren G. Harding of Teapot Dome fame (1921-1923). Before Watergate, Teapot Dome was the most sensational scandal in the history of American politics. (While paying two women to keep affairs he had with them secret Harding famously said of himself, “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here.” He delegated substantial authority to subordinates without oversight; his Interior Secretary went to jail.)
The Founders denounced direct democracy, now called populism, and argued instead for a “republic” with laws and a Constitution. As they saw it, the people’s voice could lead to a tyranny of bigotry—now called morality and even a return to God. (God is brandished by Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, active supporters of planting conservative New Age churches in hard-to-reach places. Thiel has turned a brilliant academic into Silicon Valley’s chaplain—Rene Girard, who can’t do anything about it, d. 2015, with protege J.D. Vance in his thrall.)
Laws and the Constitution are guardrails against a free-for-all, ensuring we can make what Congressman and civil rights leader (Rev.) John Lewis called “necessary trouble,” insisting on justice without being called un-American or felonious—assuming the courts don’t bend the law.
The previous post argued for the essential compatibility of passion with love. History similarly shows strong examples of passion’s essential compatibility with democracy. Transformative leaders throughout history have combined intellectual substance with emotional resonance: Gandhi’s simple dress and salt march spoke to Indians’ dignity more powerfully than any treatise on colonialism, Churchill’s defiant radio addresses stirred British courage when military analysis suggested surrender, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech moved hearts more deeply than his careful writings on civil disobedience. Even in business, Steve Jobs’ “Think Different” campaign and product launches created an emotional connection that transcended mere technical specifications.
The most effective leaders have understood that while rigorous ideas matter deeply, humans are moved to action by careful argumentation and “spiritedness”: appeals to their hopes, fears, pride, and sense of shared identity. They grasp that leadership requires being right and compelling—speaking to both the head and the heart.
My conservative colleague would not be happy to agree with me. In his eyes, I picture myself as another wolf in sheep’s clothing. But surely there is a lesson here for conservatives and liberals alike: Unless integrity is desirable and not just something we think should be true, it’s only a matter of time before it fails again.
The ancients were correct: you cannot separate the true, the good, and the beautiful—at least not if you want to live well.
Notes and reading
“conservative scholar who said much the same thing” – Carson Holloway, a Washington Fellow in the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. – American Mind (February 14, 2025).
H.L. Mencken – Chicago Tribune, “Notes on Journalism” (September 19, 1926), cited in Voices From the Past, W.B. Marsh (2020).
“conservatives on the New Right” – Mercator: A Compass for Common Sense (February 17, 2025).
On Harding – “I have no trouble with my enemies… but my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!” Harding did have some achievements, calling for anti-lynching legislation and promoting disarmament. Harding was drawn to the moral vision of the “social gospel” and regularly attended church.
– The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration by Robert K. Murray (2000). “Harding was a catalytic influence, succeeding where a different personality might have failed.”
“Before Trump” – James D. Robenalt, The Washington Post (April 2, 2023). “One of Harding’s paramours was a woman who had been followed during World War I as a likely German spy. The other, a much younger woman, had given birth to Harding’s child in 1919 while he was serving as a U.S. senator from Ohio.”
The Founders and democracy. – The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, Bernard Bailyn (2017). Pulitzer Prize-winning work on balancing popular sovereignty with constitutional constraints.
Peter Thiel, Elon Musk – Why Christianity is on the upswing in Silicon Valley. – Emma Goldberg, The New York Times Sunday Business (February 16, 2025).
Why Scapegoating Works for Trump – Jess Bidgood, The New York Times (February 3, 2025). “Rene Girard’s theory is that scapegoating is a way of bonding people together against a common enemy and thereby creating unity between people who otherwise would be in conflict.”
Tip-Off #182 – True love
About 2 + 2 = 5
