Prince or Pollster? - Review

National Review, July 26, 1999 by Noemie Emery

To the Machiavelli envisioned by Ledeen, the administration given to us by Clinton is the very model of the sickened state. To this Machiavelli, foreign and defense policies are of the highest importance, keys to the safety of the national enterprise. To Clinton, and apparently to Morris, they are mere extensions of domestic politics, and serve the same purpose: to rev up one's ratings in the polls. Nations have been formed, led, and saved by men of huge egos, who contrived to subsume them in the national interest: men like Washington, Lincoln, and the several presidents who won the Cold War. Clinton, on the other hand, has no adequate sense of a national interest and so thinks predominantly of his own. The only end to which he has ever been apt to use fear and power has been his political survival, and then so that he may go on to seek more approval. He is the epitome of the Ledeen-Machiavellian idea of the impotent leader, who wants to be loved, not feared.

Ledeen contrasts the leaders of the 1980s-Reagan, Thatcher, Pope John Paul II-who wanted respect, and made history, with their successors of the current decade-John Major, George Bush, and Newt Gingrich among them-who wanted to be loved, even by their opponents, and failed. There are signs now that Clinton, though elected twice, will soon be among them. Since winter, much of the bloom has gone off the sad rose of Bill Clinton: His personal ratings, always low, have not risen; his job-approval ratings are rapidly sinking; people are tired of him and his problems; only 30 percent would vote for him again (the Dow notwithstanding). He drags down Al Gore, whose numbers are dismal; he may also now drag down his wife. Machiavelli would not be surprised. Start out wanting to be feared, by all the right people, and you may well end up being loved in the bargain. Start out seeking love, even from enemies, and you wind up with nothing at all.