American Models of Revolutionary Leadership
Introduction
Daniel J. Elazar
Quite properly, the bicentennial commemorations in the United
States have focused on American institutions -- how the American
people established a federal democratic republic, the first of
its kind in the world, with a constitution that embodied the
principles of the new science of politics developed in the
seventeenth century and subsequently, and applied them in
innovative ways through a set of institutional inventions that
constituted the greatest step forward in political innovation
since ancient times, to launch an experiment of world-shaking
import. Missing in this celebration and reassessment of American
institutions has been a similar celebration and assessment of the
political leadership which brought this American experiment
about, for in leadership as well as in institution-building, the
American revolution offered a new and different model.
The interrelationship between a polity and its leaders is the key
to an effective and successful politics. A good leader diagnoses
the situation properly, formulates a way to deal with it, and
mobilizes the public to respond. In essence, civil society
provides the potential, but leaders make the difference. They do
so in part through possessing formal authority, but that
authority becomes real only where they can exercise power and do
so in such a way that the polity continues to accept their
authority.
In democratic republics this power means the mobilization and
allocation of resources in the maintenance and fostering of
republican norms. In any polity, but most particularly in the
democratic republic, a good leader combines engineering and
bargaining in determining and developing the means to act, in his
understanding of cause and effect as it relates to his actions,
and in applying a technology of action. Such leaders can only be
effective to the extent that they have character; in democratic
republics, that they stand for a proper sense of republican
virtue, both in their reputation and in their behavior. This is
the source of the charisma of leadership in democratic republics
beyond whatever personal charisma individuals may command.
Charisma in this sense constitutes a commanding presence in light
of the principles and expectations of republican virtue.
The United States was thrice blessed at its founding with that
kind of leadership, with men who instinctively understood what
was required of leaders in the emerging democratic republic and
what was especially required of founders whose every action would
set precedents and models for the future. Of those leaders,
George Washington stands out head and shoulders above the rest.
So he was perceived at the time and so he is again perceived
today, after his reputation has gone through the twin distortions
of saint-like veneration and debunking. The real George
Washington, with his weaknesses as well as his greatness put on
the table for all to see, remains the man he appeared to be to
his colleagues in the slightly more than two decades that he lead
the American cause. Any man who can command the awe of John
Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison
and the enduring respect of Benjamin Franklin has to have been
very special indeed.
One need not make Washington more than human to understand how he
was a paragon for his generation and for all subsequent
generations of Americans. Washington should be more than that.
He was a model of what republican revolutionary leadership should
be anywhere in the world. In this respect his reputation has not
had the circulation it deserves. Just as the American revolution
is often viewed by non-Americans as so uniquely an American
phenomenon that it has little to teach the rest of the world (a
distinctly different view than that prevalent in the world prior
to the rise of revolutionary socialism in Europe -- 1848 may be
considered a turning point -- when it served as a model from
Chile to Hungary), so, too, has Washington been dismissed as an
important American figure but no more.
We argue in this volume that this is a mistaken view, that it is
time for the world to seek out the lessons of the American
revolution and its leadership, particularly George Washington, to
strengthen democratic republicanism in the present postmodern
epoch. Here our argument regarding the importance of leadership
becomes crucial. Since the events of the late eighteenth
century, virtually the entire world (the exceptions being a few
Arab states like Saudi Arabia) has come to honor democratic
republicanism, at least in the breach. No country today,
especially none where a revolution has taken place, claims to be
other than democratic and republican. Yet we all know that the
number of true democratic republics does not exceed thirty and
constitutes significantly less than 20 percent of the world's
independent states. An equivalent percentage, principally those
in the Communist bloc, but also a few others, are sheer
hypocrites, claiming to be democratic republics, yet having no
intention of being anything of the sort. The rest seem to be
either groping toward democratic republicanism or confused.
The fate of the 60 percent of contemporary regimes that aspire
but do not achieve is not for lack of formal democratic
institutions. In this respect they have borrowed well, even
drawing from some aspects of the American experience in the
postmodern epoch. The difference seems to be to a great extent a
problem of leadership. Without leaders able to foster democratic
republicanism and republican virtue, the best institutions in the
world will come to naught. Thus the subject of appropriate
leadership, including in our time appropriate revolutionary
leadership, is of vital importance. It is too easy for most of
the world to continue to follow the path of revolutionary France
of the 1790s, the path of least resistance, and to watch the
bright hopes of a democratic dawn descend into one or another
form of tyranny and exploitation. If the peoples of the world
can learn from the American experience and if the leaders of the
world or at least the future leaders can be inspired by it, then
the bicentennial commemoration will have far broader implications
than merely being an American affair.
This book is designed to be a contribution to that end, exploring
the political leadership in American and other democratic
societies. The emphasis is on the transition from revolutionary
to stable democratic leadership. It begins with an overview by
this writer dealing with "Contrasting Models of Revolutionary
Leadership" in which the special character and contribution of
the American revolution is spelled out. It then turns to George
Washington as a revolutionary leader with chapters by Garry Wills
on "Power Gained by Surrender"; Forrest McDonald, "Washington,
Cato and Honor: A Model for Revolutionary Leadership"; and Barry
Schwartz, "George Washington and a Whig Conception of Heroic
Leadership." Wills looks at the style of Washington's
leadership, McDonald at the sources of Washington's inspiration,
and Schwartz on the impact of Washington on the civil society
which he led.
In Part Two we turn to the contrasting models themselves,
beginning with an article by Moshe Hazani on Samuel Adams and
Saint-Just as contrasting examples of professional
revolutionaries in the American and French revolutions. Hazani
takes the two men considered in their time the most extreme of
the significant revolutionary leadership of their respective
revolutions and contrasts their world views and actions in
fostering revolution and dealing with it when it came; to show
how Adams' contribution was to move from the stability of the
old regime to revolution to a new democratic stability, while
Saint-Just sought to move from the old regime to revolutionary
turbulence as a means of social transformation without
considering what came after -- in other words, a kind of
permanent revolution. Hazani's piece is followed by that of
Morton Frisch on "Revolutionary Leadership and the Problem of
Power," which focuses on Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton,
the two rivals for Washington's favor, each of whom represented a
different view of organizing power in a revolutionary context for
a post-revolutionary regime.
The final two selections in this section are Gary Schmitt's
"Jefferson and Executive Leadership: Revisionism and the
'Revolution of 1800,'" and Rozann Rothman's "Albert Gallatin:
Political Method in Leadership." Both men were leaders of the
second American revolution -- the "Revolution of 1800" or the
first peaceful turnover of government from one party to another.
As Henry Adams has deftly portrayed in his History of the
Administrations of Thomas Jefferson, the latter took office with
the intention of conducting a democratic revolution to overthrow
the entrenched federalist elite. His style of executive
leadership was designed to foster a new spirit of democratic
republicanism while systematically dismantling the Federalist
power bases. Yet he, too, had to take extraordinary actions as
chief magistrate to serve American interests. In this, he was
amply assisted by Gallatin, who brought a special wisdom to bear
for the Jeffersonians. Dr. Schmitt traces Jefferson's response
to the dilemma of executive power in a democratic republic,
beginning with his differences with Hamilton during Washington's
presidency and continuing through his own. The chapter brings
out the contradictions in Jefferson's thought and behavior
brought on by the realities of governing. Dr. Rothman considers
the revolutionary leader as organizer of government, which was
Gallatin's special role at the end of the revolutionary period.
Gallatin, the only major figure of the founding generation born
on the European continent (he was Swiss), made his mark first in
the organization of the legislative branch of the new federal
government of the United States in the 1790s and then, after the
election of Jefferson to the presidency, on the executive branch
between 1801 and 1809. In those two decades he became one of the
architects of post-revolutionary stability that embodied rather
than rejected the ends of the revolution.
Part Three focuses on issues of leadership in subsequent
generations. In his famous speech to the Young Men's Lyceum in
Springfield, Illinois, a young Abraham Lincoln recognized the
special nature of revolutionary leadership, of those people who
"belong...to the family of the lion or the tribe of the eagle"
and whose ambitions require that they be given special challenges
rather than being asked to trod already beaten paths. Then he
poses the question of how do democratic republics deal with such
vaulting ambition? Perhaps he was thinking of himself in his
remarks. Certainly he rose to a challenge similar to that of
Washington and the founders in his struggle to maintain the
Union, an event which he acknowledged in his Gettysburg Address
as nothing less than the equivalent of the revolution itself. J.
David Greenstone explores the grounding of Lincoln's leadership
in "Lincoln's Political Humanitarianism: Moral Reform in the
Covenant Tradition in American Political Culture." Finally,
Steven Spiegel brings us up to date in "Where Have All the
Leaders Gone? -- Ruling Elites and Revolution Since World War
II," in which he explores the contemporary situation and how,
even in the United States today, it so often stands in sharp
contrast to the model of revolutionary leadership provided by the
American founders.
