Everyone wants Roosevelt. Let's Ask for Coolidge Instead.

We don't need a Great Man as President. A good man will do.

Hello all! I may have been less-than-honest in my last couple newsletters about maintaining a regular Wednesday/Saturday schedule. College life and my new writing obligations are beginning to catch up to me. I will try my best to maintain two posts a week if I can, but I can only promise a Wednesday post. I do shamelessly encourage everyone, however, to check out Lone Conservative, where I am officially a regular contributor! The site has a lot of good work from a variety of young conservative voices.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about a thought that popped into my head a few days ago in response to the latest Martha’s Vineyard controversy. I do not wish to discuss my response to it (though you can find it here), but something more intangible regarding the nature of politics and the presidency.

In historical discussions there is often talk of “great man history”. It is the notion that the way we tell history is in terms of individuals we think had an outsized impact on world affairs. People like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Marie Curie, so on and so forth, are often the center of discussions involving the circumstances around them because they had major influence. Whether this is good or bad (I am personally ambivalent to the debate) is a question for a different time, but this discussion bears resemblance to a trend in American politics we’ve seen over the last 150 or so years. Let’s call it great man politics for the sake of simplicity.

It is no secret that in today’s political environment, and especially in presidential politics, the American people increasingly are looking for some single individual to solve all of our problems. We want someone bold and decisive. In an increasingly complex and tension-filled world, we continually look for someone who will etch his or her name in the history books. We want someone who can inspire hope, or fear, in an outsized manner.

In short, we ask our presidents to be greater than the office itself.

This troubles me for a few reasons, but in short; as a conservative I have a deep respect for our institutions and what they represent. That includes the values of those institutions themselves. The Presidency is not merely an office to be held; it has inherent greatness. There is a majesty to the presidency by virtue of its history and what it represents. It has a prestige in and of itself. It doesn’t need a great man to add to that; the office itself will make a man great if he so allows it.

The greatest presidents of our country understood this. Take Washington as the best example. He was an unequivocal great man before a single vote was cast for him. His greatness as president, however, was not imbued by his actions before he took office; he was a great president because he understood and respected what the office meant, and what his role in it was. He was humble in the face of the office; he let it shape him just as much as he shaped it. He respected and revered the sheer majesty of the presidency.

Calvin Coolidge, though not seen as a “great” president, is another example of this, especially in contrast to the men who came before and after him. A humble man, he did not seek to impose his image on the office itself. He did not see himself as some great man destined for the history books; as he said himself, “It is a great advantage to a President…to know he is not a great man.” He was humble in his role and let the office speak for itself.

Contrast this to some of the other men who have held the office. Theodore Roosevelt, as great an individual as we consider him, saw the greatness of the office as a tool to be used. His talk of the presidency as a “bully pulpit” reflects that (fun fact; the word ‘bully’ in this case means excellent). Woodrow Wilson is another man who reflected this view; he saw the presidency as all-powerful and believed the reach of the president was only restrained by the greatness of the man who held the office. These men cloaked themselves in the majesty of the office itself and used that majesty to further their ends. They believed they had to be great men to be great presidents.

That isn’t true. A man does not have to be great individually to be a great president. A president’s greatness is not defined by how the man shapes the office; it is defined by how the office shapes the man. In today’s world, whether it’s Obama, Trump, DeSantis, Gavin Newsome, or whoever else is president or wants to be president, they all think they need to leave a mark on the office. They don’t, and we shouldn’t ask them to. It is enough to be a good man who understands what the office asks of him. We should want that of our presidents. Humility in the face of the greatness of the office should be the first trait we ask of our elected officials.

Americans often ask their next president to be Roosevelt. We should ask them to be Coolidge instead.