'Clean Hands and a Pure Heart'
GELERNTER, DAVID
‘Clean Hands and a Pure Heart’ The stature of John McCain. BY DAVID GELERNTER Americans have traditionally rated their statesmen’s moral stature above all other accomplishments. “The truth...
...So McCain refused...
...Before the debate season opened, Obama’s own people spoke of the “stature gap” between the candidates and their plans for closing it...
...Or who shall stand in His holy place...
...They have tried, but have come up short...
...you will never rise higher than martial gallantry...
...Murat was the brilliant, swaggering commander who eagerly accepted Napoleon’s offer of the crown of Naples...
...But comparisons at this level are meaningless...
...The resemblances between McCain and Sharansky are obvious...
...The truth is,” says a foreigner to a Frenchman in Stendhal’s classic of 1830 Le Rouge et le Noir, “that your aged society values conventionality above everything...
...You will have Murats, but never a Washington...
...Sharansky’s was the more sustained and world-changing act of heroism...
...Second, the most important events of modern American history have been largely unforeseen—9/11 and the financial crisis...
...Who shall ascend the mountain of the Lord...
...The character issue” is a trivializing phrase that is often used to cut this great towering maple of a topic down to petuniasize...
...the rise of Solidarity in Poland, Khomeini in Iran, John Paul II in the Vatican...
...Napoleon himself was the soldier of genius and enlightened thinker who crowned himself emperor in the cathedral of Paris...
...Both are great hearts, and tsaddikim...
...when crises arise, the position papers are likely to be irrelevant...
...John McCain’s campaign has often been criticized for lacking a theme...
...In moral stature they are both in a class that few men even aspire to, much less achieve...
...McCain is only a part-time conservative and has never inspired enthusiasm on the right...
...American society has always been unconventional in its search for men of Washington’s mold, who care less for power and glory than for freedom, democracy, and doing right...
...Obama won’t say...
...The nation needs a man it can rely on, not position papers it approves...
...it is a measure of his life as a whole...
...BY DAVID GELERNTER Americans have traditionally rated their statesmen’s moral stature above all other accomplishments...
...One of the central fallacies of Obama-style left-liberalism is the belief that political attitudinizing is a replacement for personal virtue...
...Who wins...
...He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart” (Psalm 24:3-4...
...John McCain volunteered to serve his country as a naval fl ier, was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and imprisoned until 1973...
...His outspoken, unwavering support for Israel in the face of American Jewish indifference is a perfect example of principled versus self-interested politics...
...If he wins this election, it will be a come-from-behind surprise...
...He chose instead to play a central role in the creation of modern democracy...
...Why is today’s “global community” (or Western community) qualifi ed to pass judgment on America...
...More than any candidate in recent decades, perhaps more than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower, McCain asks to be judged not as a talking white paper but as a man...
...But in larger American terms, it will be no surprise at all...
...And he is a tsaddik beyond question, honored by the whole civilized world...
...If the left believed in beatitude or salvation, you would get there by sending money to the correct campaigns, casting the correct votes, hating the right people, and reading the New York Times, religiously...
...He is not easily defeated...
...And can anyone, left or right, imagine McCain listening to a sermon viciously slandering his country (or slandering anything he loved and honored) and quietly keeping his seat...
...Both men went on to become “maverick” politicians in the nations they loved...
...But a person’s moral stature can’t be altered by campaign slogans or debate performances...
...Compare his life with Natan Sharansky’s...
...It’s a fair complaint as far as it goes, but overlooks one important fact: McCain’s theme is himself...
...Obama’s campaign, on the other hand, shows symptoms of the left’s unwillingness to deal seriously with moral problems...
...McCain has continued to live the life of a stubborn tsaddik, personally and politically...
...If this assertion sounds crazy, that only shows how little we have thought about the issue...
...Whether you like or dislike his politics, that is John McCain all over...
...But in Hebrew he would be called a tsaddik—a man of such nobility and moral substance that he approaches holiness...
...military...
...He talks about restoring America to the world’s esteem—but who needs the world’s esteem...
...But George Washington was outraged at the suggestion that his victorious army should make him king...
...On the all-important question of moral stature, McCain’s friends must speak for him...
...Granting the importance of the topic, the difference in moral stature between presidential candidates has rarely been as enormous as it is today— not (or not only) because Obama’s is so small but because McCain’s is so large...
...Two prisoners of brutal Communist regimes who chose to suffer for their principles and for love of country...
...His positions on soft money and campaign fi nancing, and the stiff conflict-of-interest rules that have excluded so many experienced political operatives from his campaign staff, have hurt him badly—but not defeated him...
...Sharansky, who helped found the Moscow Helsinki Watch group in 1976, made a rule in prison of defying Soviet and KGB authority in every way he could—although the consequence could only be crueler treatment in Gulag hell...
...There is no single English word for McCain the hero, the moral entity...
...Come the election you can smudge the facts but not change them...
...Easily said but not easily grasped...
...To be a tsaddik says nothing about your politics...
...Russian missiles in Cuba, the Berlin wall, the Communist invasion of South Korea, Pearl Harbor...
...vous aurez des Murat et jamais de Washington...
...He was in constant pain, losing strength and approaching death when North Vietnam offered him immediate release in 1968, on account of his father’s high command in the U.S...
...he can use weak words like “maverick” and “I have been tested,” but can’t quite say “I stand before you as a hero of proven nobility...
...Sharansky, the Russian Jew who spent 10 years as a political prisoner, is today one of Israel’s leading statesmen and political thinkers...
...So what makes McCain a tsaddik...
...First, we elect a head of state to speak and act for the nation, not a mere plug-and-play prime minister to run the government...
...He consistently ignores the moral signifi cance of the blood and energy we have spent in Afghanistan and Iraq, not only to fi ght terrorism, not at all to install comfortable pro-American autocracies, but to help third-world peoples create democracy...
...David Gelernter is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, a professor of computer science at Yale, and a national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Of course no candidate can advertise his own moral stature...
...but no one doubts that each of his leftward excursions has been a matter of principle and not convenience...
...But two facts stand out and help explain why moral stature is so important to American voters...
...His story is linked to America as well as Russia and Israel: President Reagan’s unqualifi ed denunciations of the Soviet Union inspired and sustained Sharansky and his fellow political prisoners, and Sharansky called Reagan “the key fi gure in our struggle, the struggle of all people fi ghting against tyranny...
...Then the serious torture began...
...His release out of turn, as a favored son of the military elite, would have been a propaganda triumph for Hanoi...
...Obama often seems to confuse America’s moral stature with its popularity...
...In 1993 the McCains adopted a child from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh and proceeded not to talk about it...
...He was badly wounded when he was brought down and captured, and has never fully recovered...
Vol. 14 • November 2008 • No. 8
