The Pitfalls of Political Opportunism : In the eyes of most Americans, political expediency tied to self-serving ends is ‘opportunism,’ but political corner-cutting tied to presidential vision is ‘statesmanship.’

Ten months before the Republican convention, Bob Dole established himself as the clear front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination over Phil Gramm, Patrick J. Buchanan, Pete Wilson and other largely faceless aspirants running on hopes of a miracle.

Those hopes increased recently. Dole’s approval ratings have slipped as he defines his positions, on everything from culture to economics, to appeal to his party’s right wing. Like Bill Clinton and Pete Wilson before him, Dole is now regarded by many as an unprincipled opportunist. His sharp tack to the right has convinced some Americans that he is a man of little integrity who will do almost anything to get the nomination.

But why are people so exercised over Dole’s political maneuvering? Isn’t this just a case of campaign politics? A year from now, will anyone remember what he said--even Dole himself? Besides, don’t all candidates play this game? And haven’t all our greatest Presidents been opportunists or, stated less pejoratively, pragmatists shifting about in response to changing political realities?

Of course they have. But there is a big difference between Dole, Clinton and the most effective U.S. Presidents. All our greatest chiefs have been leaders with a set of core values or a grand design served by their maneuvering. In the eyes of most Americans, political expediency tied to self-serving ends is “opportunism;” but political corner-cutting tied to presidential vision is “statesmanship.”

The most successful of our chiefs--men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, the two Roosevelts and Ronald Reagan--were all preaching Presidents, with a talent for wheeling and dealing most Americans admired.

Before there was a Constitution, a nation, biographer Garry Wills says, there was George Washington--the Founding Father. Washington stood for unity, democracy and the rule of law. He was our Cincinnatus--the selfless patriot who served the nation without private gain. And he worked to invent America by whatever serviceable means came to hand. Everything we do, he told James Madison, would set a precedent, which for the sake of our posterity must have a workable design.

Jefferson, the strict constructionist, the principled advocate of self-reliant farmers, threw aside his constitutional scruples to build “an empire of liberty.” He doubted that the Louisiana Purchase conformed to constitutional powers given to the President. But the chance to open landholding opportunities to the nation’s growing population for decades to come moved him to sacrifice a smaller principle for a larger one.

Lincoln was no different. The need to preserve the Union, to assure that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish, made Lincoln one of the country’s greatest presidential opportunists. The Emancipation Proclamation was designed less to free the slaves than to preserve the Union by striking a decisive blow against the South’s peculiar institution.

Lincoln had never advocated full freedom for the slaves until it became a device for saving the Union cause. Whether it was provoking the South into firing the first shot to assure Northern unity in a Civil War or arbitrary violations of civil liberties, Lincoln was the consummate opportunist, devoted to the cause of permanent constitutional Union.

Though he faced less formidable challenges, Theodore Roosevelt, who saw the presidency as a bully pulpit, was as passionate about preserving American values and interests, by whatever means necessary, as any of his predecessors. His crusades to dismantle trusts and corrupt political machines were more rhetorical thrusts than concrete reforms restoring economic and political democracy to the national life. His acquisition of the Panama Canal route in 1903 and mediation of the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 were less acts of altruism serving the economic and political well-being of the world, as he alleged, than policies principally advancing U.S. national interests.

As the historian Richard Hofstadter said of TR’s presidential leadership, he was “the master therapist of the middle classes.” Roosevelt, the accommodationist and imperialist, was, in the eyes of most Americans, a determined fighter for the larger public good at home and abroad.

His distant cousin, Franklin, was the greatest of our visionary chameleons. The New Deal to combat the worst economic collapse in U.S. history was a hodgepodge of economic and social experiments aimed at relieving suffering, restoring prosperity and humanizing the U.S. industrial system. The struggle to defeat fascism and develop U.S. commitments to postwar internationalism was carried on in the name of foreign-policy illusions--of the hope that we could assure allied victory without American belligerency costing us hundreds of thousands of lives; and that we would see the triumph of collective security in a postwar world ready to follow America’s lead. FDR was a master illusionist pressing to fulfill the promise of American life through any device serving his ends.

No recent President fit the pattern of principled pragmatist more than Reagan. He built his reputation as a politician on identification with traditional American attachments to individualism, self-reliance, hard work, family and free enterprise. Yet, as governor of California and then President, many of his actions belied his words: An anti-abortionist, he signed into law California’s liberal abortion statute; a fierce opponent of tax and spend, he sanctioned the California withholding tax and ran up breathtaking deficits as President. Yet, because the public trusted his character, they saw his actions as pragmatic compromises and not unprincipled opportunism.

The current public mood toward Clinton and his Republican challengers, as well as examples of past presidential mastery, are an invitation to Colin L. Powell to launch a national campaign. Like Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower before him, he is a military man who comes to a political career as a kind of national icon, with few, if any, political deficits. He can stand above the political battle. Neither Democrat nor Republican, he is regarded as the embodiment of all American values--an up-by-the-bootstraps man of color whose intelligence, talent, hard work, faith in the American system and good luck have made him a modern Horatio Alger standing at the center of the nation’s life.

Many are clamoring to know what Powell stands for. But his credentials, which identify him so clearly with traditional American principles, can insulate him from having to say too much about his views on any given issue.

Nonetheless, he has already made a skillful start toward positioning himself at the vital center--where most Americans prefer their Presidents to be. He is for fiscal conservatism and social justice, meaning, cut government spending but not in ways that hurt the neediest. He is a beneficiary of affirmative action, but he is opposed to quotas. He is personally opposed to abortion, but endorses a woman’s right to choose.

Like Andrew Jackson, Powell can be our symbol for an age. But more important, he can revive America’s faith in its essential decency and capacity to manage its domestic affairs and advance the cause of international stability and peace.

In time, he will need to address the fundamental problems of our era--including the decline of American living standards and the excessive concentrations of wealth and poverty.

But all this can come in due course. First, he must gain the presidential prize. And if his efforts to do so are seen as principled compromises, no one is better positioned to become the country’s first black President and launch an administration that, once more, combines high hopes with practical reforms.*