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Dr. David R. Young,
Hansen Wessner Lecture,
Yale University,
5 October 2000
First of all I wish to thank Bill Pollard and the Board of ServiceMaster for the opportunity and privilege to give this lecture.
Secondly, I must say that when Bill first asked me to speak I pleaded for more time to think about what I might have to say within the terms of reference of the Hanson Wessner lectures, which were established “to further discussion of a moral and ethical reference point in the market place.” While the place I examine is not the marketplace but a political place, I believe the reflections that follow apply to both when it is a matter of how people behave in the pursuit and exercise of power.
I am thus here with you—not as a professional politician, academic, theologian or lawyer—but as someone sharing reflections on one of the most lasting and profound memories of my years in the White House and its impact on my life since then.
That memory was and is of a sense of “battle”— not battle between armed forces in Vietnam or hard negotiations over strategic arms deployments with the Russians, or of conventional wars elsewhere, or even of conflict between economic blocs—but of a sense of a spiritual battle between Good and Evil. And by Good and Evil, I mean the spiritual forces of good and evil at work in the highest places as well as those in each individual human heart. To quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s classic work, Gulag Archipelago;
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, not between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of hearts there remains an uprooted small corner of evil…. It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.
To this I would only add that the line that passes through every human heart also passes through the history of human behavior on a grand scale. And as discouraging as that history may seem, my underlying assumption is that God is nevertheless the God of History and that in the end—in the “Last Battle”—Good will prevail over Evil. However, history is not yet over (notwithstanding Mr. Fukayama), and the challenge for all of us is, How do we find the moral and ethical compass by which to live day to day?
I have chosen a rather prosaic title, “The Nature of the Exercise of Authority.” The “nature” I wish to address is the “spiritual” nature or dimension, and the kind of “authority” I wish to address is “power”—not economic, military or market power, but political power—whether legitimately or illegitimately attained. It is thus important to recognize that I am addressing the exercise of political power in liberal democracies as well as in non-democratic authoritarian regimes. And thus my subtitle is, “The Spiritual Dimension of the Exercise of Political Power,” and my focus is not on “Who?” or “Whom?” but on “How?” and “Why?”
My involvement with politics began in the mid-1960s while I was working as a young lawyer in New York City at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy. In 1968, I was seconded to the Rockefeller family offices where I spent evenings doing volunteer work on the “Rockefeller for President” campaign, of which I later became Treasurer. There I met Henry Kissinger and it was through this connection that he asked me, in late 1969, to join the National Security Council (NSC) staff and to work with him[1] as his Personal Assistant. My prime qualification, to quote him, was “because I can trust you.”
Being Kissinger’s Personal or Administrative Assistant involved three broad areas of responsibility—14 to 16 hours a day:
After about 18 months I became a Special Assistant with specific assignments from Kissinger, John Ehrlichman, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs, and the President. These assignments included:
It is important to take a moment here to recall the tenor of the times of which I am speaking; that is, 1968 to 1973. The atmosphere was intense:
As the country reeled from newscast to newscast, the stress on those in charge grew each day. Overall, it was a period of underlying pessimism, anger and extraordinary turmoil.
In such circumstances, the challenges to one’s character are unrelenting. In turn, this leads to vulnerabilities on matters of right and wrong. And in the midst of all this, one becomes aware of a level of human behavior and decision making that cannot be explained in conventional terms. One begins to sense that there is another dimension, for good or ill. I have called it a spiritual dimension, but call it what you will, it must be recognized. It is the nonrational side of the exercise of political power and therefore it is seldom talked about. Why? Because it doesn’t fit with our self-image and self-confidence that we are in control and can explain everything logically and rationally.
My thesis, therefore, is:
In preparing for the White House, I searched for something to read on what such a job might entail. The most interesting guide was a small book by President Kennedy’s speechwriter Theodore C. Sorensen entitled, Decision Making in the White House (published in 1963).2 In trying to answer the question, “How does a President make up his mind?” Sorensen wrote: “It is my view that three fundamental kinds of forces influence most White House decisions, to be discussed in terms of presidential advisors, presidential politics and the presidential perspective” (page 7).
Sorensen then lists five limitations within which a presidential decision must be made; namely, those of: “permissibility, . . . available resources, . . . available time, . . . previous commitments, . . . [and] available information” (page 23).
Sorensen was useful insofar as he went—and especially considering that he was in office at the time. But it did not address what I have come to believe is central to understanding the “exercise of power.”
Specifically, much attention is paid to the physical and intellectual dimensions of political decision making, especially in the White House, but little to the emotional, nonrational or spiritual dimension. In other words, we often address the demands of the exercise of power on one’s body and mind, but seldom on one’s spiritual character. By character, I mean the individual human being as a whole person—including body, mind, spirit, emotions, ambitions, beliefs, prejudices, relationships, values, fears, etc. Indeed, the Hebraic concept of “soul,” which views man as an integrated whole, created in the image of God, comes closest to what I mean by character.
Being a lawyer and looking for some precedent or parallel for my observation, I found myself recalling the famous lecture series on the nature of the judicial process given by Justice Benjamin Cardozo here at Yale 80 years ago this winter. In the lectures he agreed to simply put down his thoughts on “how” he, and by implication judges generally, made decisions. It was indeed an historic series, for it seems to have been the first time that someone of stature stripped away the pretense of the law in a straightforward and comprehensive manner.
Cardozo’s argument was that when the reasons of the written and common law alone “are nicely balanced” and do not yield an answer, then the judge’s own judgment—subjective and subconscious as it may be—comes to the fore. Cardozo explained, “Deep below consciousness are other forces, the likes and dislikes, the predilections and the prejudices, the complex of instincts and emotions and habits and convictions, which make the man, whether he be litigant or judge.”3
To paraphrase Cardozo’s thesis: These “subconscious loyalties” may have more to do with how one decides the case than their knowledge of the law. This view was later caricatured by those who said: “The law may thus depend on what the judge has for breakfast.”4
I do not presume to liken my lecture to Justice Cardozo’s except in one respect: our goals are not dissimilar. Just as Cardozo challenged his listeners to think unconventionally and admit there was another dimension to the legal process, so I wish to challenge you to consider that there is a further dimension to the exercise of power.
At the same time, our approaches are dissimilar in that Cardozo’s analysis reduces the judicial process in many cases down to its more elemental factors—“inherited instincts, traditional beliefs, acquired convictions.” Others have even taken this approach further by saying that the law is nothing but power, but class, but race, but gender, but sexual orientation, etc. Not surprisingly, the outcome is not only a debunking of the law (something of which I am sure Cardozo would disapprove) but a failure to explain properly human actions and decisions, whether judicial or political.
In contrast, I believe that the challenge is to move in the opposite direction—“up” rather than “down.” In other words, I want to consider the impact of a higher level of factors—for good or ill—such as character, collective thinking, and spiritual conflict in the political process.
It is my experience that “how” power is exercised is the result of the character of the individual. If we deny that there is a spiritual dimension to such character, I believe we limit our capacity to be fully human. As such, it is then possible to limit the significance of others, and eventually this type of thinking allows us to treat each other as less than fully human. Atrocities—whether in Third Reich concentration camps, Stalin’s gulags, Cambodian killing fields, or more recently, the uncovered mass graves in the Balkans—seem to be perpetuated when individuals are caught up in mass hysteria or collective emotion so that they no longer see others as fellow human beings. When such episodes pass into history, the remaining traumatized society is haunted by the question: How could this have happened?
F. Scott Peck’s book, The People of the Lie, is very instructive here for, as you know, he was the Harvard professor who was asked to examine Lieutenant John Calley in the wake of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968. His conclusion in short was that the conventional explanations that Calley was either 1) psychotic or 2) neurotic were not applicable. Thus he began to try to find another explanation. In the end, Peck concluded that there was something else at work and he called it “Evil.” Calley’s own statement is telling:
In all my years in the army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by—I don’t know—pawns, blobs of flesh. I was there to destroy Communism. We never conceived of it as people, men, women, children, babies.
Scott went on to logically conclude that there must be “Good” if there is “Evil,” and this was the beginning of his search, which eventually brought him to faith in God.
My point here is simply that just as Peck could not explain Calley’s behavior within conventional analysis, so the nature of the exercise of power cannot be fully explained within a conventional two-dimensional—intellectual and physical—world alone. However, before we discuss the spiritual dimension we must examine the elements of conventional analysis. I will begin with “Power.”
Man has always sought power. Such ambition is part of being human and can be a laudable trait if directed to right and good ends, and for the benefit of others as well as ourselves.
However, when “appropriate ambition”—having achieved its end—becomes “inappropriate” and the self-interested pursuit of power comes to dominate, we come abruptly to Lord Acton’s oft-quoted observation that, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” To this one might add, “And a little power corrupts little men absolutely.”
It is important to understand the meaning of the word “corrupt” here as much more than dishonest dealings. Rather, I believe Acton meant that the individual wielding the power loses his way, loses his bearings—behaves in a way he would not admit to or recognize in the cold light of day. This may be the ultimate kind of corruption resulting from the exercise of power.
I will first examine “The Exercise of Power” in terms of self-interest, image, information and control, credit and blame, and secrecy and truth.
As Garry Wills writes in his book, Nixon Agonistes, “The pursuit of self-interest is a kind of duty in America.”5
The overarching question however is: To what end is political power sought? For the political leader, it is ostensibly to do what he thinks is in the best interest of the nation, state or organization, etc., for which he is responsible.
Invariably, almost all leaders equate their desire to do what they think is in the best interests of their constituency, with their gaining, exercising and retaining power. The argument becomes, “What’s good for me is good for the nation. My self-interest is the same as the national interest.” The great danger here is that it can lead to a belief that, as it is in the national interest that I be elected or reelected, the end justifies the means.
In this pursuit of self-interest, then, what is it that enables one to gain, exercise and retain power? Besides ambition, what is it that facilitates this drive for power and the delusion that “what is best for me is best for the nation”? The answer is found in the creation of an image.
Kissinger wrote in his memoirs: “Of course, every President carefully nurtures his own image; the obsessive pursuit of it, after all, brought him to where he is.”6
Understanding the importance of a good image was not something unique to the Nixon White House. Indeed, we have no one better to thank than Machiavelli who so succinctly linked the roots of power to image. In today’s world, Machiavelli might be hailed as the godfather of modern spin doctors. He set out so clearly both the “means” and the “ends,” i.e., the right image begets power. His advice: a prince should appear to have such qualities “as are considered good”:
A wise prince then, is very careful never to let out of his mouth a single word not weighty with… .five qualities; he appears to those who see him and hear him talk, all mercy, all faith, all integrity, all humanity, all religion. No quality does a prince more need to possess—in appearance—than this last one.7
Machiavelli further pointed out that negative qualities are necessary at times. For example, that cruelty prevail over mercy, stinginess over liberality, fear over love, duplicity over reliability, etc. He sums up: “For a prince, then, it is not necessary actually to have all the above-mentioned qualities as are considered good, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.”
Every president hopes to appear in the first instance strong, sensitive, credible, self-confident, etc. The importance of these qualities can be seen in Kissinger’s description of Nixon’s admiration of John Connally8 whose “swaggering self-assurance was Nixon’s Walter Mitty image of himself.” Of course, it would also be useful to have Machiavelli’s appearance of being religious, faithful, trustworthy, humanitarian, charitable, etc.
To a large extent, these lists overlap with the qualities that most electorates admire and that all presidents and political leaders seek to emulate. The pursuit of an image detached from reality, however, is obviously a risky game. If it is pursued, there is no doubt that one has a better chance of projecting the desired image and preventing reality from interfering if secrecy is used to insulate one from the other. Hence, the preoccupation with secrecy and the critical role of information in most national executives.
All leaders, virtually without exception, want to create an image of the qualities identified by Machiavelli “as are considered good”; they in turn invariably embrace the values of secrecy and two fundamental related assumptions:
In turn, power flows back from the image because it is the image that is the key to the gaining, exercising and retaining of power—which in turn further facilitates the creation of information. Openness of course diminishes the capacity to control credit and blame.
But how does the prince/president/prime minister/CEO/board chairman manage to create such an image; that is, appear all wise, sensitive, understanding, tolerant, religious, kind, etc. The vehicle is essentially “words”—words that convey good news (and bad), good policies (and bad), good strategies (and bad), good results (and bad). And for every bit of good news, policy, idea, strategy or result, everyone will want the credit. And for every bit of bad news, policy, idea, strategy or result, no one will want to bear the blame.
The key therefore is to get the credit for oneself when the news is “good” and shift the blame to others when it is “bad.” The most effective way to do this is to have control of the words announcing the news, policy, idea, strategy or result. (For example, Vietnam withdrawals were usually announced by Kissinger or Nixon from the White House, while weekly casualties were usually announced by Secretary Laird or a member of his staff at the Department of Defense.)
The sequence is:
Information leads to Power » Credit » Image » Power » Information
Indeed, it is power that provides the capacity to create information to begin with, in which case the picture becomes a power-creating circle with information as the critical starting point.
The creation and control of information to get credit and shift blame is thus the key to the expansion of power, but it is also recognized that there is a limit to the amount of significant information that can be generated. Moreover, once used (that is, made public), its power-enhancing capacity evaporates. Thus the recognition of the need to constantly create information makes thoughtful politicians view their power at any given time as having definite limitations. Their power is the informational content of a zero sum game.
In my experience, this notion produced tenacious infighting and deliberate duplicity to gain access to and control of information and a piece of the power pie. It also goes a long way in explaining the sensitivity of virtually every White House Administration to leaks of inside information. Conversely, it seems that the reason why leakage surfaces in almost all administrations is because the bureaucracy, sensing that its share of the power pie is being reduced, becomes intent on curbing the power of the White House to create and control information.
When one considers that most presidents and their assistants spend a great deal of their time cultivating their relations with the press, we have a further explanation for their bias in favor of operating on their own and without much assistance from the bureaucratic community. Kissinger’s power through his positive image in the press enabled him to implement decisions and policies that otherwise might not have been possible, or at least would have required substantial bureaucratic cajoling. He often stressed, however, that his power was based only on the President’s confidence in him. He frequently pointed out that if such confidence evaporated, he would be powerless. But the fact was that the President’s confidence in him was, in large part, determined by the positive image that Kissinger had created of himself in the media—an image that later grew to overshadow the President’s own. In sum, the confidence of the President and Kissinger’s power based on image reinforced each other. The problem for each man, however, was in keeping track of reality as distinct from image.
To wield power based on image, one must remain interesting to the image builders. Retaining such interest can usually be accomplished by making oneself the exclusive source of reliable inside information, something in which Kissinger excelled. In the end, the image-makers accordingly found it difficult to criticize him for they would then be undermining their own credibility, since they were the ones responsible for creating the image.
In showing the relationship between the use of words to create the right image and the goal of gaining, exercising and retaining power, I have intentionally left to the end the most crucial ingredient—that of secrecy. For it is secrecy that enables one to create image and insulate it from reality—and to make personal “self-interest” appear as part and parcel of the “national interest.”
Secrecy is at the root of the power base of nondemocratic and authoritarian regimes. It is the direct opposite of transparency and openness, but it thrives in liberal democracies as well. Secrecy thus plays a subtle but pivotal role in enabling power to be retained by those in power in all societies.
One of the most insidious things about secrecy is that it tends to bind those together who are privy to the secrets. Moreover, it has a tendency to make them more susceptible to a kind of group-think mentality—which creates its own plausibility—and in turn can be more easily detached from reality. As a result, rational people get trapped in a mind-set believing it to be the only one.10
A certain level of secrecy may be critical to success in high diplomacy.11 For example, some 13 secret trips were made to Paris by Kissinger in the course of the Vietnam negotiations; and the success of the opening to China and the SALT negotiations were highly dependent on secrecy. Leakage, perhaps more importantly, can have the exact opposite effect to which it was intended; namely, instead of widening discussion, debate and advice, it narrows them and the creation and control of information gradually becomes concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer advisers.
In sum, secrecy is the handmaiden to the creation and control of information in the pursuit of power derived from image. But it extracts a high price when practiced excessively by raising tension and stress over all, spawning leakage by those left out and undermining departmental morale in general.
Of course, at the center of this game is “truth.” That is, the use of secrecy is in large part an exercise in how and when to use or not use the “truth.” Churchill once said that “truth is so precious that she must often be attended by a body guard of lies.”12 This was of course in wartime, but once in power—war or no war—the self-identity of most political leaders with the national interest seems to become so strong that they feel justified in using the truth—by disclosure or nondisclosure—to pursue their own ends, i.e., get the credit and stay in power. In common jargon this whole practice is called “spin” and it may or may not have anything to do with revealing the truth; but it certainly has much to do with secrecy, image, power, credit and blame.
The notion of a “spiritual dimension” to the exercise of power is not new. In 1888, in his famous book Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:
For when Truth engages in struggle with the falsehood of ages, we must expect shocks and a series of earthquakes, with a rearrangement of hills and valleys, such as has never yet been dreamed of. The concept of ‘politics’ is thus raised bodily into the realm of spiritual warfare. All the mighty forms of the old society are blown into space—for they all rest on falsehood: there will be wars, whose like have never been seen on earth before. Politics on a grand scale will date from me.13
Nietzsche’s conclusion, that politics is a struggle between truth and falsehood and is a matter of “spiritual warfare,” is at the heart of my thesis. In more recent times Vaclav Havel said in an address in Tokyo in April 1992, “When I look around the world today, I feel strongly that contemporary politics needs a new impulse, one that would add a badly needed spiritual dimension.”
There is, of course, another school of thought that seeks to reduce the notion of power to its more elemental aspects and that raises an interesting parallel to Cardozo’s view of the judicial process. Such a view is epitomized in Mao Tse Tung’s famous dictum that, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” or Stalin’s mocking quip in 1935 when urged to take a conciliatory view of Catholicism in Russia: “The Pope? And how many divisions does he have?” This is not to say that Mao and Stalin did not wield great power, but that power is not simply a matter of physical or armed might or the capacity to enforce one’s will.
My most lasting memory of the White House is that those exercising political power do so in the midst of a spiritual battle. There were indeed days when I thought if I could only roll back the ceiling and roof over my office in the West Wing, and if I only had the right spiritual eyesight,14 I would witness an awesome battle in the heavens overhead—a battle not unlike the one in the hearts and minds of all those involved and so eloquently described by Solzhenitsyn at the beginning of this lecture.
Before anyone thinks that I may have gone too far here, let me remind you that throughout history great literature, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante’s Inferno, and noted artists such as William Blake, have all tried to describe and picture with extraordinary imagination the spiritual dimension of battles between the forces of good and the forces of evil.
Indeed I would even say that the most accurate and concrete description of what I am talking about goes back almost 2,000 years to the Apostle Paul, who wrote in Ephesians 6:12, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this present world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
The fact that Nietzsche and the Apostle Paul agree that the exercise of political power is a matter of “spiritual warfare” must, at a minimum, challenge all of us to examine the possible reality of such a view.
I am not a military man, but I do know that battles are about winning and losing—about attacking, defending, strategy and tactics, deception, surprise, support, courage, determination, confidence—and, most of all, about character.
So how does the individual living in a three-dimensional world fare in the crucible of the exercise of political power at the highest levels? How does he or she cope with the spiritual forces of the battle? I have divided my thoughts on this into “Strategy and Tactics” and “Preparedness.”
While the forces of evil may sometimes be on the defensive, it seems safer to assume that they are more likely to be on the offensive at the highest levels. This is so because they, as the patently weaker force over all, can only prolong the battle and cause maximum damage by following classical military strategy, for example:
The intensity of the spiritual confrontation is in direct proportion to the amount of political power at stake.
Those exercising such power are the strategic high ground targets on the spiritual battlefield. They are the “players.”
Whether evil is on the offense or defense, its strategy and tactics are likely to be pretty much the same. Where there is the greatest concentration of political power (that is, the opportunity to do greatest good or greatest harm,) there one will find the greatest concentration of spiritual forces.
Another perspective on the spiritual dimension may be glimpsed by viewing the contending sides as a guerrilla force on one hand and large main force units on the other. Guerrilla movements may or may not have just causes, and may or may not deserve to win; that is not my point here, but rather to borrow a phrase from Kissinger: “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose and the main force units lose if they do not win.” In other words, the weaker attacking forces of evil can cause major disruption for the larger defensive forces of good, even though the former may be doomed to fail in the end. I do not want to stretch the analogy too far, but I think it provides a useful insight into the strategy and tactics on the spiritual battlefield.
So, how do we prepare? How can one holding political power prepare for such battle? How can one defend oneself?
Before I left my job at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy, I went to see John J. McCloy, head of the firm and my mentor. He was former Under Secretary of Defense in World War II, High Commissioner to Germany, Head of the World Bank, confident and adviser to every U. S. president from Roosevelt until his death a few years ago, and one of America’s truly great public servants of the twentieth century.15 I asked him for his advice and one of the things he said to me was, “Just remember, there will be a lot of intrigue in the palace when you get that close to the throne.”
I mention this because “intrigue” at its heart implies “duplicity”— “to conspire or to make secret plots.” One must recognize also that loyalty and trust among colleagues declines in proportion to the amount of power at stake. It is also vital to be on one’s guard and to recognize that as a player, however lowly, one is a target—both in the seen world of rational, bureaucratic infighting for credit, as well as in the nonrational, unseen spiritual world. In this connection, it is more important to be aware of one’s weaknesses than one’s strengths.
In any event, here are some reflections on preparedness.
Avoid getting drawn into the intrigue: Let your “yea” be “yea” and your “nay” be “nay.” Or as it is stated in the scriptures (Matthew 5:37), “Anything more is from the evil one.” Do not be equivocal. Do not complicate the notion of truth. (All of us know instinctively when we are not telling the truth about something we have seen or done or said. My recollection is that there were more Watergate convictions for perjury, than for the acts charged.)
Don’t underestimate the value of loyalty (trust). Be loyal without compromising your integrity. (Don’t try to serve two masters. Just as a house divided cannot stand, neither can a man.)
Have a clear sense of who you are (strengths and weaknesses) and why you are where you are, but never let the position become more important to you than your own view of yourself. Have confidence and faith in your future regardless of what happens. Mr. McCloy’s advice to me on leaving the White House in 1974 is pertinent here: “The most important thing for you to do is to maintain your integrity and credibility as a private citizen.” In other words, do not let your self-identity get swallowed up by your job or position, however successful
Be sure that your self-identity and belief in yourself is not dependent on achievement, praise or power. These come down to a sense of hope and peace about the future. So regardless of how well or how badly things happen to be going, learn to live each day in a self-contained way.16 In my case, I benefited from my belief that God is the God of history. However brilliant, chaotic, foolish, delightful or tragic the circumstances I witnessed in the White House, I drew on this belief daily. As was written in the famous Desiderata Prayer in a Baltimore church in 1624: “Whether or not it is clear to you or me, the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Have a clear reference point and framework of moral values that provide a guide as to what is “right” and “wrong."
Be alert and have the courage and confidence to do what you know or sense is right, even when it is against your own self-interest.
When something does not seem right, trust your instincts and say so. Otherwise you may get co-opted, as silence is taken as assent. And once it is, it’s very difficult to reverse.
For me my ultimate reference point was/is my faith in God. Whether you agree or not, it behooves you to have thought through your own criteria for right and wrong and “why?” Once you are there, you don’t have time to figure out what you believe in. As Kissinger often said, once in the White House, he was living off his intellectual capital. In a similar vein, we all live off of our moral capital in such circumstances.
Be passionate about the truth—even in the smallest matter. There is a connection between mundane matters of truth and substantial matters of truth. When no one sees or hears, the truth is still the truth.
Remember that “nothing is done for nothing”; that is, everything has a price. Therefore, avoid being obligated whenever possible.
Be faithful in the mundane tasks. They may or may not lead to more responsibility, but do them because it is right to be diligent.
Endeavor to maintain a calm, quiet, noncrisis, non-panic attitude notwithstanding the circumstances.17
Be aware of the dangers of collective emotions leading to a group-think, irrational mentality, which is exacerbated when in an environment of secrecy.
Recognize that you are in a spiritual battle that will test you as a whole human being—not just your physical stamina and your mental acumen, but your beliefs and values.
Recognize that you need the support of others. In a word, one needs humility—humility to recognize that the rational and logical world does not have all the answers.
These ideas18 are not quick-fix answers. They make up our character—what we are when no one is looking—cultivated throughout our lives.
As multinational corporations and financial institutions have continued to grow in recent years in the wake of—or as the instruments of—globalization, those in authority in such organizations exercise power not dissimilar to that of their political counterparts. As Bill Pollard wrote in The Soul of the Term;
Power in business is suspect, and not without reason. It is, I believe, because management often wields too much power and there is no effective check and balance or governance either at the board level or from that diverse and distant population often referred to as “the shareholders.”19
Indeed CEO’s have their press officers—and spin doctors—who take care of their image. Their media are the security analysts and their audience—instead of voters—are their shareholders. They are therefore very much subjected to the same demands—and temptations—to put self-interest in place of corporate interest and play the game as those wielding political power.20
The information power circle described above is also as applicable to CEOs as to presidents and prime ministers. Each has within his or her power the capacity to manipulate the information he or she is the first to know or create. Hence, with a little help from the creative accounting side, unless things go disastrously wrong, “results” can usually be produced “in line with expectations.” Of course, they will have worked hard at creating the expectations that they are sure to meet in the first place.
While it is beyond the scope of this paper, I just want to put down a marker here on the reference and impact of the internet to all I have been saying about the exercise of power. Image (correct or incorrect) as well as truth or falsehood can be global in milliseconds—and the impact can be constructive or destructive. It can promote transparency or it can promote terrorism. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it expands everything relating to communication both for better and for worse. It is as important to the future of politics and business as it is to the future shape of democracy and education around the world. In sum, it behooves us all to take its ramifications very seriously.21
While I have addressed things primarily from the perspective of the exercise of substantial political power, the principles apply to all relationships, and the reflections and lessons are applicable to more than the small circle of men and women around the world who run countries or major corporations and financial institutions. It is my belief that there is a spiritual dimension to how we work with colleagues, treat our husbands or wives, raise our children and relate to one another every day. It is my hope that, whatever your station or calling, these ideas may prove of value to each of you on a day-to-day basis.
What is our responsibility in the light of all that I’ve tried to say?
It is crucial to recognize what we—the onlookers/spectators (and even the participants) of the exercise of power—are admonished to do; namely, “To pray for those in authority.”
In I Timothy, the Apostle Paul writes: ”I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be offered for all men, for sovereigns and all in high office that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life, godly and respectful in every way.”
Moreover, we are not urged to pray only for the “good guys”—that is, only for those elected in legitimate democratic systems. It says pray for all those in authority—good and bad—legitimate and illegitimate. Why? Because they are both the players and the targets. They are the ones exercising the power, for better or for worse. If they lose their sense of right and wrong, and if their values get distorted and they make bad decisions instead of good ones, then the harm, damage, pain and loss that results is all the greater. The challenge today therefore is that we should be praying for Milosevic and Saddam Hussein as well as for Clinton, Bush, Gore, Blair, etc.
A word about the last 25 years and the vision that has been at the heart of the building of Oxford Analytica. When I returned to Oxford in 1974 after my time in the White House, my dream was to create something to help those in authority. Yes, I would pray for them; but perhaps on a practical level one could do something more. Maybe there would be a way to draw on the understanding and judgment of the most knowledgeable people around the world to provide detached, non-prescriptive, nonpolitical, nonideological, non-spin analysis for those in authority—for those exercising power.
In marked contrast to the prevailing ethos of those in power (that is, “nothing is done for nothing”), we would not want to influence anything; we would just try to provide the best analysis on the implications of national and international events—i.e., what happens next.
We all know that hype is a business, innuendo is a business, PR is a business, slander is a business and “spin” is a big business—but the central question for us as a firm was, Could “truth” be a business? (Or as the Oxford Dons like to say, “Could analysis with the least amount of distortion be a business?”)
For those of you who don’t know about the work of our firm, let me just say in a broad sense that we are a consulting firm that provides strategic political, economic and social analysis on the implications of world developments. We do this through tailored consultancy studies and, each week day, through the Oxford Analytica Daily Brief.
We began with ten Oxford Dons in 1975, and today draw on a network of over 1,000 senior faculty members (scholar-experts) in major universities and research institutes all over the world (including Yale). We have about 50 Oxford Dons who are involved at the core part time, with a full-time professional staff in Oxford of about 50. Altogether we have an estimated daily readership of 30,000-50,000 in about 200 clients worldwide, including numerous governments and major international organizations, as well as many of the largest corporate and financial institutions in the world—almost all served at the highest levels. In addition, we now have a growing number of universities (including Yale) that receive the Oxford Analytica Daily Brief on a three-month delay.
To a great extent, one could say we have realized our dream: to provide those in power with the best advice possible. But this is not the whole story, for it fails to take into account the thesis of this lecture; specifically, that in the end it is the character of the individual human being as a whole that matters.
Let me conclude with a story that poignantly illustrates my point. Lord Chesterfield, the famous English statesman, in a letter to his son dated 5 March 1749 wrote as follows:
Closet politicians never fail to assign the deepest motives for the most trifling actions, instead of often ascribing the greatest actions to the most trifling causes, in which they would be much seldomer mistaken. They read and write of kings, heroes, and statesmen as never doing anything but upon the deepest principles of sound policy.
But those who see and observe kings, heroes and statesmen discover that they have headaches, indigestions, humours and passions just like other people; everyone of which in their turn determine their wills in defiance of their reason.
Had we only read in the Life of Alexander that he burnt Persepolis, it would doubtless have been accounted for from deep policy: we should have been told that his new conquest could not have been secured without the destruction of that capital, which would have been the constant seat of cabals, conspiracies and revolts. But, luckily, we are informed at the same time, that this hero, this demigod, this son and heir of Jupiter Ammon, happened to get extremely drunk with his whore, and, by way of frolic, destroyed one of the finest cities in the world.
Read men, therefore, yourself; not in books, but in nature. Adopt no systems, but study them yourself.
In sum, whether decisions are right or wrong, good or bad, it is not merely a matter of having good advisers or being an experienced and powerful leader. In the end, it comes down to the character of the individual acting within the mystery that God is the God of History. Character shaped not just by physical and mental demands but by spiritual ones as well.
It is only when we grasp the reality of this spiritual dimension of character that we appreciate what it means to be fully human. This impacts both how we see ourselves, as well as how we treat others. It determines how we live our lives day by day, publicly and privately.
Most importantly, recognizing the spiritual dimension of character is an essential part of the foundation on which we must establish a moral and ethical reference point for the political and commercial marketplaces of this world. It is the creation of such a reference point that is going to be the basis of how we meet the enormous challenges ahead for all of us.
[1]During this period Kissinger was Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.
2Theodore Sorensen, Decision Making in the White House (New York: Colombia University Press, 1963).
3Benjamin Cardozo, The Nature of the Judicial Powers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1921), p. 167.
4 Robert Hutchins, “Autobiography of an ex-law student,” Chicago Law School Review 1051 at 1054 (1934).
5 Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-made Man (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1969).
6 Henry Kissinger, White House Years (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1979).
7 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
8 Governor of Texas, shot with President John F. Kennedy.
10For example, the Soviet view of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
11See Vernon Walters, Silent Missions (New York: Doubleday, 1978).
12 Winston Churchill, Memoirs After Tehran Conference (1943).
13 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (emphasis added).
14 The kind of spiritual eyesight needed would be akin to that of the Prophet Elisha and his man-servant in II Kings16.
15 Walter Isaacson, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York: Touchstone Books, 1997).
16 See Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If.”
If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you/But make allowance for their doubting too.
17 Kipling, “If.”
18 Drawn from the Apostle Paul’s admonition to put on the whole armour of God in Ephesians 6.
19 C. William Pollard, The Soul of The Firm (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2000) p. 101.
20 Fox example, recent SEC rules prohibit special briefings by executives for analysts ahead of release of information to the public.
21 See this year’s Ditchley Lecture by James Billington, Librarian of Congress.
