I am not arguing that political leaders are geniuses, scholars, or even gentlemen and ladies. Simply, political leaders know how to be leaders or they wouldn’t have emerged as such. It is the delight of all societies to belittle their political leaders, and leaders surely do make mistakes. But the mistakes they make, when carefully examined, are rarely stupid. More likely, mistakes are forced on them by circumstance. We would all like to believe that we – or our favorite candidate – would never have acted so stupidly. It is rarely true. Geopolitics therefore does not take the individual leader very seriously, any more than economics takes the individual businessman too seriously. Both are players who know how to manage a process but are not free to break the very rigid rules of their professions. – page 11
Lisa Simpson decided not to reveal the ugly, criminal truth about a beloved town hero "because the myth of Jebadiah Springfield has value too, it's brought out the best in everyone." This is peripheral to the subject of this section, but it's an astute observation about the role of mythmaking in American life.
I am fascinated by the role of mythology in American life. We ascribe profound significance to each American leader. I wouldn’t argue that the choice of what leader we choose is insignificant, but I am beginning to think it doesn’t matter as much as we like to think. This is particularly true in the realm of foreign policy.
That’s in stark contrast to the generally held notions about leaders, whom we imagine run the earth. Americans are obsessed with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. While I think they are historically progressive documents, they aren’t the source of our power. That comes from a different well entirely.
I am a partisan of the American regime, but it is not the Constitution or the Federalist Papers that gave the United States its power. It was Jackson’s stand at New Orleans, the defeat of Santa Anna at San Jacinto, the annexation of Hawaii, and the surrender of British naval bases in the Western Hemisphere to the United States in 1940 – along with the unique geographical traits I have spent much time analyzing in these pages. – page 251
If this is true, how do we really know what leaders are significant? What’s the criteria? Perhaps there are particular areas where an American leader is particularly useful, while being of little consequence in other areas. I am still not clear on how to evaluate such things. There’s a lot of fuzziness in such assessments.
We don’t elect presidents; we elect god-kings that we promptly kill because they don’t live up to either our lofty standards or our expectations of utter failure. The partisan political environment is one of extreme heat and little illumination.
Against this backdrop, how do we Americans see ourselves? How do we reconcile our self image with geopolitical reality?
Imagine a perfect candidate in your mind. Your political affiliation hardly matters. What does matter is that your dream-candidate could never do the things you might want him to do. Dismantle the navy? Double the size of the armed forces? Withdraw from the world? Radically reshape the economic system? Support the projects you imagine are most important?
Talking heads will claim a few of those are the aims of the current commander-in-chief, but presidents can’t do the things we want because they’re constrained by their times and a system that encourages gridlock. They’re also constrained by the social mood, technological changes, and a thousand other invisible moving parts. We imagine that they can part the seas, but they are really swept up in the tide. They aren’t powerless, but neither are they titans.
