A well entrenched cynicism towards politics & public service.

Obama starts his book telling us about the cynical attitude that many Americans adopt when discussing politics:

It's been almost ten years since I first ran for political office. I was thirty-five at the time, four years out of law school, recently married, and generally impatient with life. A seat in the Illinois legislature had opened up, and several friends suggested that I run, thinking that my work as a civil rights lawyer, and contacts from my days as a community organizer, would make me a viable candidate. After discussing it with my wife, I entered the race and proceeded to do what every first-time candidate does: I talked to anyone who would listen. I went to block club meetings and church socials, beauty shops and barbershops. If two guys were standing on a corner, I would cross the street to hand them campaign literature. And everywhere I went, I'd get some version of the same two questions.

"Where'd you get that funny name?"

And then: "You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?"

I was familiar with the question, a variant on the questions asked of me years earlier, when I'd first arrived in Chicago to work in low-income neighborhoods. It signaled a cynicism not simply with politics but with the very notion of a public life, a cynicism that —at least in the South Side neighborhoods I sought to represent— had been nourished by a generation of broken promises. In response, I would usually smile and nod and say that I understood the skepticism, but that there was —and always had been— another tradition to politics, a tradition that stretched from the days of the country's founding to the glory of the civil rights movement, a tradition based on the simple idea that we have a stake in one another, and that what binds us together is greater than what drives us apart, and that if enough people believe in the truth of that proposition and act on it, then we might not solve every problem, but we can get something meaningful done.

(Barack Obama: pp. 1-2)

It's not something limited to the US, of course. Most Europeans view politics (not to talk of the politicians themselves) with the very same cynicism. Is it something new? Is this cynicism something that identifies our era, as many argue? I'm not so sure about it. We always hear of a past when things were supposedly better, people more straightforward and honest. However, it only takes a quick trip to the archives to see the letters to the editor from thirty, forty, sixty years ago. They dealt with the very same issues. They displayed the very same missaprehension towards politicians and businessmen, always considered the self-serving elite. My feeling is that there never was a golden age of politics, where our politicians were all humble statesmen who gave their lives away to serve the people. That is always an interpretation we make afterwards, years later, decades later even, way after the facts. On the spot, when it truly matters, a sizable chunk of citizens (perhaps the majority) always felt skeptical about their leaders. That's not news, I think. In that sense, there is no need to be overly pessimistic about it either. We are not going downhill, as some might have it.

Idealism as the most pragmatic course.

Although Morris' choice of title for his book may generate a good amount of mixed feelings among readers (after all, Machiavelli has come to be seen, unfair as it is, as a synonym of dirty politics and overt hipocrisy and pursuit of self-interest at any cost), the truth is that The New Prince does not read as a manual of dirty tricks. Rather, it reads as a political manual in the good old tradition started by the author of The Prince, widely considered to be the first study in Political Science. The preface already gives us a good idea of the line he follows in the rest of the book:

If American politicians were truly pragmatic and did what was really in their own best self-interest our political process would be a lot more clean, positive, nonpartisan, and issue-oriented. It is not practicality which drives the partisanship, and the never-ending cycle of investigation and recrimination in which we wallow, but a complete misapprehension of what Americans want and what politicians —in their own career self-interest— should offer. If Machiavelli were alive today, he would counsel idealism as the most pragmatic course.

(Morris: p. XV)

I totally agree with Morris on this one. How often have we heard in the past twenty years or so that the problem with contemporary politics is precisely the fact that politicians are too pragmatic (too "professional") and don't hold deep beliefs? On the contrary, I think what most citizens dislike about politics (the constant bickering, the sectarian approach to the issues, the ad-hominem attacks) have more to do with ideological dogmatism than pragmatism. Everyone is fully aware that our societies are too complex for politicians to be amateurish. This may be OK at the local level in the smallest towns, but as soon as we move to higher levels the amateur approach just doesn't cut it anymore. The people who hold most offices have to work on it full-time. They have to be professionals. There is no other choice. However, precisely because they are professionals, their main goal should be to achieve objectives, to deliver. I am convinced that citizens don't have a problem with a politician who commits mistakes or changes his mind on a particular issue, as long as he delivers. That's how voters —especially those who matter most: the independents— will judge him. They are seen as freelance advocates. And yet, Morris is right when he points out that most politicians simply are not aware of this change in perception. They continue doing politics the old way: in a partisan manner, with an ideologically-driven agenda, blinded by a set of rigid ideological principles that are seen as the magic recipe to solve all problems.

I have a little issue with Morris' choice of words though. Idealism is usually identified precisely with the sort of starry-eyed unrealistic expectation based on a given dogma. True, it doesn't have to refer only to that, but let's face it, it's what most people identify the term with. I do think a politician must have some deeply held principles or values, but she must also have an idea how to bring them to life, how to implement them in real life. Politics is the art of applying ideas to the real life by implementing it in the form of projects. It's not so different from business management after all, although most people would shy away from that comparison because it doesn't sound grandiose enough.