"I have
never let anyone suffer from hunger. I have never caused anyone
to weep; I have never made anyone afraid. I have never spoken
with a haughty voice. I have never been deaf to the words of
justice and truth."
These words are
from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. They are words a public
official had to be able truly to utter at death in order to
secure a place in the afterlife.I doubt that I shall meet many
Egyptian public officials in the afterlife, and not just because
I don'ts think there is one.
Perhaps I could
restrain my scepticism if told that one of our civil servants
could have spoken these on his deathbed. But if a politician,
especially one who attained ministerial office or higher purported
to sum up his career in such words, that scepticism would intensify.
It is not cynical, but plain common sense to hold that in modern
liberal democracies, with attendant party politics, no person
so righteous as those words suggest would have a chance of great
political success.
I do not mean that
no decent men and women are to be found in politics. We have
a notion of being decent that does not preclude engaging, within
limits, in the peccadillos, or even the larger immoralities
of pursuing a political career. Maybe we have such an idea because
we have have learned by now that we cannot, as Plato hoped,
have supremely just, intellectually gifted and wise men and
women as rulers; but we also do not want our politicians to
be as ruthless and manipulative, as wicked, as Machievelli said
princes had to be in order to establish states and maintain
republican life. And Plato is careful to deal with the unlikelihood
of his ideal republic, by saying that an ideal may have a value
as a standard for criticism of realities. What I shall argue
for here is the desirability of politicians who, while capable
of ruthlessness, chicanery and deviousness when it is truly
called for, are nevertheless reluctantly so, often to such an
extent that they need to exploit their authority and power to
command others to do the nasties for them.
The issue I am
engaged with here is faithful to the title of this series. It
is beyond left and right; for no matter where each of us is
on the various left/right spectra, no matter which side of politics
we stand on, we can surely stand together on this question:
Who do we want as politicians? What kind of men and women, with
what dispositions, what habits of decision making, are desirable
as politicians?
The question becomes
more significant when we reflect that, in politics, in a political
career, it is often necessary, politically necessary to do things
which are morally dubious, examples later, though I doubt whether
one needs them for an audience of news reading citizens of a
democracy.
I mean to focus
on distinctively political acts. I am not interested in the
problem of corruption, of politicians using office for personal
or family enrichment. How to avoid getting politicians of that
ilk is a problem in its own right, but it is not the problem
of decisions where, morally dubious though it may be, something
is politically the right thing to do, the politically necessary
thing to do. But the word 'necessary' there only says that the
act is a means necessary to some political end. This will usually
be a case where those who disapprove will speak, in moralistically
ironic tones, of 'the end justifying the means',
I have always found
such irony puzzling as an expression of disapproval. If I am
called on to justify an action which is not done for its own
sake or out of clear obligation or duty, it has to be the aim
or end of the action that explains or justifies it. What else
could I turn to?. To justify is to give reasons, and good reasons
mention desirable outcomes or avoidance of undesirable outcomes.
. What else could justify an act that is not done for its own
sake or out of obligation?
To be fair, I suppose
most who use the words 'so the end justifies the means' are
focusing on an action seen as morally dubious. . Let me say
a bit about why I do not unqualifiedly describe such acts as
immoral or wrong. This will require a digression, but one which
is needed to develop my argument.
There is a position,
a theory in moral philosophy called utilitarianism. In its classical
and simplest form, this theory holds that there aren't any instances
of what I talking about, no instances of a politician doing
what is the right or necessary thing to do politically but also
a wrong thing or a bad thing morally, or at least morally suspect.
. In characterising the cases we are focusing on, I am in a
way in agreement with the utilitarian. They will be cases where
the consequences of one of the alternative courses of action
is likely or even certain to yield more well-being, or less
suffering for all those affected than any other available course
of action. Or so our politician judges. Utilitarianism in this
simple version says that an action is right just in case it
produces the best overall outcome in terms of well-being of
the parties involved, the classical 'greatest happiness of the
greatest number.' The negative version puts it that that action
is right which minimises suffering. The supposed excellence
of defining right action this way is that it is objective and
factual, even if the facts of the matter prove difficult to
determine. Probability reigns. This moral theory drives a sharp
wedge between acts and their motivations, between act and intention.
Because of uncertainty about the future, utilitarian theory
of what it is to act rightly, as distinct from doing the right
thing, is that the agent must do what is, on the probabilities,
most likely to result in the greatest happiness of the greatest
number. If things don't turn out well, as they often won't,
you have done wrong, whether you like it or not, but you cannot
be deemed morally wicked or negligent or unjust or anything
like that. You can act rightly, be justified in your action
and still fail to do the right thing. How apparently objective
this makes matters is indicated by the parallel with believing
truly and believing justifiably. Sad though iit be, I may believe
something, be justified in believing it, have excellent reasons
for believing it, and it may still turn out to be false. I can
do my believing rightly but fail to believe what is true; so,
according to utilitarianism, I can do my acting rightly, act
on the best available reasons, and still fail to do the right
thing. Indeed, true belief has, I reckon, a better chance generally
than right action. Unforeseeable or unintended consequences
loom for right action much larger than deceptions, illusions
and non-culpable errors loom for true belief. Uncertainty as
to whether you have done right is perhaps compensated for -especially
in politics - by the thought that history may vindicate you
even if early on things don't look good. Such thoughts surely
abound in Washington D.C. as we speak. But those who repose
hope in the long run should keep in mind the words of John Maynard
Keynes; 'In the long run we are all dead.'
What I agree with
the Utilitarian about is that the reason for doing the morally
dubious thing will typically be a utilitarian reason. Where
the utilitarian and I differ is that he thinks that nothing
morally dubious is being done. Something unfortunate even awful
may have to be done, but it is not wrong if consequences come
out right.
If you are a utilitarian,
the issue I am raising is of no real interest. This is because
for a serious utilitarian, a case where something nasty has
to be done in order to stay in office or protect a good political
outcome - perhaps agree with Senator X to support his odious
bill on abortion in exchange for his support - such a case is
just a case of achieving the best consequences in the circumstances;
so it is the right thing to do; it is not morally problematic
at all. If there is a difficulty about the decision, it can
only be the difficulty of uncertainty and risk, not the difficulty
of having to do something morally dubious. The extreme case
of this, one that, by my lights was not politically justified,
supposedly took place in the then Soviet Union under Stalin.
I have read that some decent but devout Bolsheviks, overcame
their reluctance to kill some of those it was deemed necessary
to kill by insisting that it was a inappropriate reluctance,
labelled for those purposes squeamishness or bourgeoisie sentimentality.
.
I am often tempted
to use these considerations as an argument against utilitarianism.
. How? Well, in these cases, I agree that the decision is between
outcomes where one involves more ill or well being than the
other does. Often, maybe always, when there is morally troublesome
decision, it is the right thing to do weigh and compare consequences.
It does not follow from this that the valued kinds of actions
, when not in conflict, are valued for their consequences. If
I break a promise to meet you for lunch in order to help a lost
child find its way home, you have no complaint, so long as I
explain things to you later. Breaking a promise v. helping a
lost child is, as I have heard such things put, a no-brainer.
The balance of consequences is plainly one way.
But it does not
follow that we have to understand the good of helping a child
or the good of keeping a promise, when these do not conflict,
in terms of consequences. We do the one because the child needs
help, the other because we said we would. It isn't always consequences.
If I, a strong and able swimmer, save my wife in the turbulent
sea rather than two drowning infant strangers, I probably fail
to do what, according to the utilitarian, is the right thing
to do, especially at our age. But that only shows that utilitarianism
is in error about what ethical life is like. If the infants
are our grandchildren, I might act differently, not insist,
as I might have done in our youth with our own children, on
saving her despite her demanding cries that I save them. . It
is silly to try to decide what everybody ought to do in such
circumstances. One wonders how utilitarians can claim the authority
to speak so definitely for the rest of us. It is even worse
for philosophers to suppose themselves qualified to make recommendations
or lay down principles for such catastrophes.
Let me return from ethical theory to politics. Protecting or
furthering the prospects of a desirable goal is clearly a political
act. Prominent among such acts, distinctive to high level politicians,
is resigning in protest against a cabinet decision, as we saw
in England with two labour MPs in the wake of the decision to
join in the invasion of Iraq. Such actions are always have an
indeterminateness about them. They may be expressive of a moral
stance and may terminate a political career. But they may be
stages on the way to a coup against the current leadership,
as with Keating v. Hawke some years ago. Hawke did something
morally dubious in breaking his word to Keating, though he saw
it as politically necessary, believing Keating could not win
the next election. Such cases are within the normal rough and
tumble of politics; losers or victims, if you like, take it
in their stride for the most part. They may have a complaint,
but hardly a grievance. On the lower plains of politics, struggles
for selection, struggles for government offices, more and less
elevated, can see politicians breaking promises, lying, misleading,
etc. In some such cases, victims are entitled to serious complaints
of having been dealt with unfairly or unjustly. Perhaps Peter
King felt that way when Malcom Turnbull did him over in Wentworth.
And my impression of the notorious Graham Richardson - called
a 'numbers man' - is that many a lesser light in the party has
grievances against him.
Then there is
the business of misleading the public or hiding disunity in
the cabinet or in the party. . No politician dare avow, what
must often be true, that he or she very much opposes a particular
policy or action decided upon in cabinet. When they do, the
press usually treats it as confidential. This connects with
the issue of resignation I mentioned earlier. It involves equivocation
and evasiveness as well as plain lying. This fact about politics,
at its sad extreme, leads to people we hope for better from
becoming incapable of discussing an issue on its merits. Everything
publicly uttered is concerned, as Richard Nixon used to say,
with how it will play in Peoria. This cost of democracy and
a free press in combination seems to me more to be deplored
than the spectacle of frequently amusing indignities on the
floor of Parliament. Keynes once made a delightful remark about
one of Roosevelt's minions, a sort of Graham Richardson of his
day. Keynes said the man had his ear so close to the ground
that he could not hear an upright man speak.
No doubt those who enter politics anticipate much of this; and
if they do not, they learn fast or drop out. The desire to achieve
what it takes politics to achieve can be fine, even noble; and
the desire to lead is often enough the desire to be a good leader
and serve the nation well. I do not believe citizens in democracies
have any business being as cynical as we often are. And I find
Mark Latham's discouragement to young people about going into
politics disgraceful. The harsh hurly-burly of Parliament, which
we easily, and correctly, judge to be undignified, sometimes
grotesque, is just the most visible bit of what democratic societies
must abide. As Churchill said, it is a bad form of government,
except for all the others. Conflict, deep conflict, conflict
among passionately held values, is endemic to modern societies.
One of my favourite philosophers, Stuart Hampshire, titled his
last book Justice is Conflict, arguing that 'hearing the other
side', the crucial feature of procedural justice, is a constant
in any viable human society. The intensity of conflict may ebb
and flow through history; and liberal democracy may justly claim
to be the most successful polity yet at containing conflict
short of violence and oppression. Not the least feature of our
success is that we contain a diversity of deep differences,
a pluralism of values nearly beyond belief that rarely descends
into chaos and violence, and even then only in pockets, usually
urban pockets. A further symptom of our success is that I could
use the word 'we' in that last sentence, not just meaning us
here in this room.
Politics, then,
is impossible without our politicians being sometimes confronted
with decisions of the kind of am talking about. So we return
to my question; given that morally dubious things sometimes
are unavoidable, do we want our politicians to be people who
do them comfortably or do we want them to be men and women with
a disposition, a habit of reluctance, moral reluctance, but
still able to do, or have done by subordinates, the necessaries.
I vote for those
who feel reluctance and discomfort. And distress, but still
manage to get on with it. But let me look, as it were, higher
up, at the behaviour of people at the pinnacles dealing with
the furtherance and protection of the national interest in the
world arena. We have recently had a good example of a Prime
Minister, ours, resolved to act very problematically with refugees
and asylum seekers in order to maintain cooperative relations
with another country, whose assistance in border protection
has considerably reduced the number of illegal immigrants. Indonesia
is also important in the struggle with Islamist terrorism worldwide.
The Indonesians want us to make Australia less attractive and
available to unhappy Indonesians (Papuans in particular). I
do not know how John Howard feels about all this. He gave in
to his liberal liberals on the matter of refugees and now he
seeks in effect, to renege on that. So he is letting them down,
not to mention the Papuans. But he may very well be doing the
right thing in respect of Australia's interests.
I hope it is clear
that it is not necessary for you to agree with me about any
case of this kind I come up with. We are going to have political
and moral disagreements among ourselves about such things as
the excellence of a policy a politician is pushing through,
perhaps by horse-trading and supporting bills even he finds
repellent, or not, as the case may be. But are we not in agreement
that we prefer to have as politicians people who, while they
can do the dirty when it needs to be done are morally sensitive
enough not to think it is the right thing to do all that often.
The desirability
of these kinds of men and women in political life can be seen
even more clearly, if we consider the business of being able
to get subordinates to do things for you which you cannot bring
yourself to do. Take a few cases where political leaders have
ordered things to be done which it is very doubtful they could
have done themselves.
My argument, you
will recall, is that we should prefer them to be like that rather
than be people who can carry out the deeds themselves. Remember
these will be acts where utilitarian computation of probabilities
for well or ill being comes out in favour of the acts. Truman
ordered an atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He was convinced that more American troops would die in an invasion
than it was tolerable to permit. Churchill refused to allow
a warning to the people of Coventry of an impending major air
raid. Had Coventry been warned, the Germans would have inferred
that the British had broken a secret code, having done which
gave the Allies a huge advantage in the war. After the war -
I don't know if Churchill or Atlee did it - Russians in British
custody who gone over to the Germans during the war or had deserted
the Russian forces, were sent en masse back to Russia where
execution awaited them. They were demanded back by Stalin and,
I suppose, it was decided that good relations with the Soviet
Union were more important than the lives of those men. The loading
of the men on to trucks and ships was perhaps the ugliest aftermath
of WW II. A play has been written about it, but I do not know
its title.
Again, we may disagree
about these cases, but you can think of your own list if you
have read much history or just read the newspapers regularly.
We may disagree about any such case, often depending on our
own politics. But I am sure we do not disagree that we hope
to see a minimum of such cases.
Returning to domestic politics, when a group of Vietnam veterans
in Texas spread lies about the conduct of John Kerry in Vietnam,
a campaign greatly to the advantage of Bush and the Republicans,
Bush did nothing to repudiate this scurrilous support. . It
may even have been organized by Bush's aides. That would have
been made the matter very morally suspect, near Watergate in
the league table of dirty tricks, though probably not a criminal
act. It was bad enough as it was, but, assuming it was not organized
by Bush's own campaign, who would condemn him for riding the
advantage? It would have required nobility publicly and firmly
to repudiate those supporters and join in praise of his opponent's
military record. .Moreover, if he had done so, would we believe
it was done without an eye to how that would play in Peoria?
Both in the arena
of the domestic struggle to gain and retain power and in the
arena of furthering and protecting national interest in the
world's melee of cooperation and competition among nation states,
we can find cases where a politician will be reasonably said
to have done the right thing politically even if it was a bad
or a wrong thing morally. And on both these fields of play,
a politician may, in order get the thing done, use his authority
to delegate the nasty bits of the task to others.
Learning of such
things, some take a line that is spuriously appealing. The line
is that it should not be possible or allowable for those in
authority to command things to be done which they would not
be willing to do themselves. What is wrong with that line? It
goes to the original question I raised about what sort of men
and woman we want to hold offices of such power and authority
that they can command dreadful things to be done.
We do not want,
I suggest to put in office people in who will be willing and
able themselves to do horrible things.. If we agree that sometimes
such things have to be done, we surely want people in power
who will do or order done such things only with great reluctance,
even distress. For surely if, alternatively, we want our politicians
be the sorts of people who can do these horrible things themselves,
without reluctance and distress, not bothering to taking advantage
of the power to command others to do it for them, we will get
people into office who will do significantly more horrible things..
It is reasonable to expect that people with dispositions of
reluctance and distress will not find as many situations to
be of the sort that politically justify immorality.
What we want are
people who can do these things, but will feel terrible about
having to do it. They will surely do these things less often
than those who feel no qualms about it.
I do not want to suggest that utilitarians are people who can
do such things without qualm. It is just that their qualms cannot
be moral qualms. They cannot, logically cannot, see what they
do as rejecting an ethical choice in favour of a political choice.
For utilitarianism is, finally, like its traditional rival,
the morality of duty and the categorical imperative of Immanuel
Kant; and, I suspect, the ethics of Plato as well, a view according
to which moral reasons, if they are in play, must prevail over
any other reasons for action. This view is hard to stop short
of holding that there is always something that is the morally
right thing to do and that morality is all-pervading; Morality
is always in the front seat.
I have offered reasons why we should want our political leaders
to be people who can see that sometimes morality has to take
a back seat while appreciating that it really is being put in
the back seat and feeling distress at strapping it in there.
Surely this us preferable to either the moralistic demand that
our leaders must not command anything to be done they would
not willingly do themselves or the cynical position that morality
has nothing to do with politics in the first place. .
Lloyd Reinhardt
.