How Vital Is a President’s Moral Authority?

Most Americans believe President Bill Clinton is a liar. They overwhelmingly distrust his denials of an improper relationship with a former White House intern. But an even greater majority applaud Clinton’s conduct of his office, giving him some of the highest presidential approval ratings ever recorded. Faced with these poll results, pundits alternately wring their hands about the nation’s flaccid moral fiber or congratulate Americans for developing the sophistication of Europeans, an ability to wink at personal peccadilloes and judge leaders only on affairs of state.

What can we make of this attitude toward Clinton? Does it mean nothing for a president to lack moral authority, even as the country girds for war against Iraq? Can a president build a consensus for military action in a distant land if the people distrust his very word?

That possibility certainly would have surprised many generations of Americans. Ever since George Washington’s first biographer, Parson Weems, invented the story about the man who could not tell a lie, sincerity has formed the bedrock American image of the worthy leader. A national holiday--President’s Day--celebrates truthful Washington and the cherry tree and honors that amazingly dexterous politician and wartime strategist we prefer to remember simply as “Honest Abe.”

While other nations have prized leaders for their cunning--Talleyrand, Otto von Bismarck, Benjamin Disraeli--Americans have viewed the term “diplomat” with suspicion. In the 1820s, charges of duplicity and back-room chicanery crippled the administration of John Quincy Adams. When no candidate won an electoral majority in the election of 1824, the House of Representatives passed over leading vote-getter Andrew Jackson and awarded the presidency to Adams. Adams promptly made another of his opponents, Henry Clay, secretary of state.

As rumors of a “corrupt bargain” circulated, charges that Adams had traded the senior Cabinet post for the votes of Clay’s supporters in the disputed election, the Adams administration lost moral authority and found governing all but impossible. Clay, a four-time loser in American presidential politics, never escaped the taint of his alleged double-dealing. As for Adams, only after reinventing himself as a anti-slavery crusader and returning to Washington as a congressman, did he restore his reputation as an leader.

Of course, a reputation for truthfulness and a commanding moral authority has not always been a prerequisite for the presidency. In the latter half of the 19th century, a motley collection of party hacks, political spoilsmen and moral reprobates competed for high office. In 1872, Ulysses S. Grant won reelection although his opponents, including a dissident faction of his own party, convincingly tagged him as a fool, a drunkard and a swindler. So little moral stature did the ex-general possess that historian Henry Adams would declare he “had no right to exist.” The downward spiral in presidential character, Adams insisted, “from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence enough to upset Darwin.”

A dozen years later, the election of 1884 witnessed the all-time low in public assessments of presidential character. The GOP hopeful, James G. Blaine, possessed, in the description of one historian, “every political asset except a reputation for honesty.” His enemies dubbed him the “Tatooed Man,” because numerous scandals stained his name, including a 19th century version of Whitewater. Against Blaine, the Democrats ran New York Gov. Grover Cleveland, whose reputation for sterling moral character had won him the moniker “Grover the Good.” But Republicans soon uncovered dirt on Cleveland, reports that the bachelor had conducted an affair with a Buffalo widow and fathered an illegitimate son. “Ma, ma where’s my pa,” his opponents taunted. “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha,” Cleveland’s supporters replied.

Still, the exposure of Cleveland’s sexual misconduct neither denied him the White House in 1884, nor affected his ability to govern through two discontinuous terms. U.S. voters largely forgave Cleveland: not because they approved of his affair, or were distracted by his (largely unnoticeable) stands on the issues or applauded his stewardship of the economy (Cleveland steered the nation into the century’s worst depression). The president’s moral stature mattered little in the late 19th century because the presidency mattered little. The federal government was relatively small and Congress controlled almost all aspects of national policy-making. Cleveland’s most famous presidential action was a decision to do nothing: He vetoed bailout legislation during the economic panic of 1893, declaring, “It is the duty of the people to support the government. It is not the duty of the government to support the people.”

In the 20th century, the office of the president assumed awesome prestige and power, and with it a renewed concern about the integrity of its occupants. Theodore Roosevelt revivified the presidency, extending the reach of the national government and establishing the United States as a formidable international power. But as Roosevelt molded the executive branch toward its modern shape, he insisted the president display old-fashioned qualities of manliness, virtue and probity. Captivated by TR’s personal qualities, Kansas editor William Allen White ascribed Roosevelt’s popularity to his moral authority: “He poured into my heart such a new attitude toward life, and patriotism, and the meaning of things, as I had never dreamed men had.”

Woodrow Wilson similarly expanded the authority of the presidency, staking his claims to national and world leadership on his own and America’s moral purity. “We have no selfish ends to serve,” Wilson declared as he took the nation into World War I. The high-minded minister’s son sincerely embraced the ideals he so fervently invoked; no other appeal would likely have overcome the nation’s historic antipathy to intervention in European quarrels.

Few of Wilson’s successors shared his piety or asceticism, but they all recognized that their political effectiveness, particularly their ability to guide the nation through international crises, rested on popular faith in their moral authority.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy suppressed reports of their marital infidelities. Kennedy entered into dubious bargains with J. Edgar Hoover to keep secret his dependence on prescription drugs to relieve the debilitating symptoms of Addison’s disease. Lyndon B. Johnson covered up financial malfeasance. These presidents had no doubts that exposure would cripple their administration, that a president without credibility could not wage the twilight struggles against fascism and communism.

Why, then, are a people who venerate Honest Abe ready to follow a man dubbed “Slick Willie”? First, as Clinton repeatedly insists, the era of “big government” is over. While the presidency remains far stronger than during the last century, Americans look less and less to Washington to solve national problems; they ascribe their destinies increasingly to the impersonal operations of international markets and the narrow objectives of private organizations. Second, 25 years of independent counsels and ethics committee inquiries have shaken all faith in the moral authority of national leaders. Even squeaky clean Jimmy Carter weathered accusations of impropriety within his administration, and had to dismiss top aides tarred with allegations of financial wrongdoing and drug abuse.

Americans seem prepared to follow a president they distrust, to accept Clinton’s attack on Saddam Hussein’s obstructionism, untruthfulness and immorality even though his own credibility is so tenuous. Henry Adams thought the presidency had declined from Washington to Grant. What would he think now?