"One reason many politicians behave badly these days is that we spend less time thinking about what it means to behave well. This was less of a problem in past centuries when leaders, teachers and clergy held detailed debates over what it meant to have good character.
. . . .
Trollope’s ideal leaders are not glamorous celebrities of the sort we have come to long for since J.F.K. They are more like seamen or carpenters. They are judged by their professional craftsmanship.
They are thin-skinned about any moral transgression they might commit and rigorously honest when judging themselves."
Regrettably, Phineas Finn is a figment of Trollope's imagination, and I don't remember a time when politicians as a whole behaved well, with the exception of America's founding fathers. The difference is that in the past they did not leave computerized fingerprints.
Brooks concludes:
"And if more people spent their evenings at least thinking about what exemplary behavior means, they might be less likely to find themselves sending out emotionally stunted tweets late at night."
But how will people learn to spend their evenings turning inwards and contemplating virtue in an age of narcissism, when books, including those of Trollope, are no longer read, classical concerts are no longer attended, and "American Idol" is all the rage. For the most part, politicians, with some notable exceptions, are the bottom of the barrel.
Me? I will never forget a conversation I held with U.S. Congressman Al Lowenstein, who, some 35 years ago, berated me for commuting every day in my battered Mercury Cougar to law school. "What a waste of gasoline," he declared to all within earshot. At the time, I didn't have the cohones to tell him that there was no public transportation that could get me to classes and that the overseas conference that he had just attended had also been a monumental waste of energy, but I doubt he would have cared. He was too in love with himself to listen.
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