ON SEEKING A HERO FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

IF the task of finding the ideal President were turned over to an executive recruiting agency, its scouts would find the U.S. full of men of extraordinary ability. They would be dazzled by all the bright lawyers, economists and scientists, the able mayors who run cities more populous than states. The country teems with brilliant managers of great organizations, including virtuosos who shift effortlessly between corporations, foundations and Government service. Quite a few such men know more about the nation's besetting problems than any visible presidential candidate.

The age cries out for greatness in the White House. The trouble is not only that so many talented Americans shun politics, but also that no sort of accomplishment in other fields necessarily qualifies a man for the extraordinary demands of the presidency. Solemn reformers will doubtless one day propose a special Presidential Academy with a faculty of hundreds. Enrollment would be for a decade, the curriculum immense and open-ended. With his power over nuclear war or peace, the American President can do no less than strive to be the world's most rational man; a philosophy degree might help, at least a little. Surely he also needs degrees in law, economics, political science and military strategy, to say nothing of personnel management.

Morality Play

Alas, no amount of schooling is likely to produce the philosopher-king who could truly handle a job that may be getting too big for one individual. And even the present system may not be so bad as it often seems. The electoral machinery is ramshackle, the campaigns absurdly long, and yet they train the survivors in many skills that are as necessary to governing as they are to getting elected: the skills of compromise, of horse trading, of creating coalitions.

Far more than all that, a President has to establish moral authority based on public trust. Indeed, the whole art of governing a democracy lies in mustering popular consent on a vast scale. A President must have convictions, a vision of where the nation should travel; he must summon the national mood and push it in the right direction. If he fails to give his people a sense of participation in crucial decisions, his politics may be doomed from the start. "A President," says Political Scientist lames MacGregor Burns, "must be both preacher and politician."

The President must really assume a role in a morality play, a ritual drama in which Americans expect him to slay evil. That idea goes back to the founders' exultant belief that America was truly God's country, the nation charged with the task of proving that a free society could thrive. This belief lingers, and it is not confined to assertive patriots. Consciously or unconsciously, it is shared by the country's harshest critics, including the New Left, whose very anger is based partly on the assumption that the U.S. should be near-perfect, a working Utopia.

The great American morality play, the acting out of American goodness in the world, used to be comparatively simple. It could be accomplished by isolation, by existing as an uncontaminated example to other nations. Later, it could be accomplished by forceful intervention against evil, as in both World Wars and Korea. It is the special bitterness of the Viet Nam war that it has put into sharp question just how the U.S. can continue its role of working for good in the world. At home the dilemma is parallel. There, American goodness was first based on self-reliance, then, in the 20th century, on a growing sense of social justice, always surrounded by a belief in steady progress. Suddenly, the emergence of the militant civil rights movement, and the redefinition of poverty as an outrage, undermined the basic American belief in gradual, beneficial improvement.

Not only will the 37th President have to go on combating foreign and domestic violence; he will have to cope with some critics who insist that he renounce force while others demand force so repressive as to threaten the very values of U.S. life. He faces a combustible era of hope, hunger and hatred, of challenges to authority everywhere, of fractioned ideologies and aggressive nationalisms. He will have to cope with race, crime, the moon and nearly a billion Chinese. He will have to show that he understands why youth is restless. He will have to be a conciliator of unprecedented ability, uniting the nation's angry have-nots with the affluent majority. Above all, he will need to master the art of making people surpass themselves--their fears, selfish desires, corrosive group interests.

All these demands make clear what voters should more than ever seek in 1968. It is the quality at once most obvious and most elusive: character. To vote wisely for a presidential candidate is basically to judge his strength of character--shorthand for the classic moral virtues of cour age, justice and prudence. Equally significant is a man's self-confidence, a quality of inner assurance. Mere arrogance is not self-confidence, and oratorical skill is not a sign of it. More revealing is a capacity for growth, a virtue necessary to every good President. Those who grow acquire a sense of history, a feeling that the right moment has come for the right innovation--and the confidence to forge ahead even when the people are not quite ready.

All these qualities create the incalculable gift of moral authority. Presidents who have attained such leadership have somehow managed to appear larger than life, yet not so large as to frighten their fellow countrymen. They have not feared to make enemies. They have not feared to admit error --perhaps the most attractive trait that men in power can display. They have accepted personal responsibility for their administrations, whether it was Truman declaring that "the buck stops here," or Kennedy taking the blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco by forthrightly announcing: "I am the responsible officer."

The Greatest Asset

They have earned consent by acts of visible integrity amid temptations; a refreshing few have also deflated themselves with self-depreciating laughter. They have appealed to the best in people by uttering the right words at the right time, words that form a kind of national chorus: "With malice toward none . . . World safe for democracy . . . Only thing we have to fear is fear . . . Ask not what your country . . ." The lines are cliches now, but that very fact is a kind of tribute.

If these lines were good theater, they were also intensely believable. The next President will find a greater skepticism, a greater resistance to words, no matter how ringing. He will find the moral authority of the U.S., and of the presidency itself, considerably diminished. Yet he may also find that this moral authority can be quickly restored. His greatest asset, perhaps, will be that the world wants the U.S. to be great, or at least inspiring (if nothing else, John Kennedy demonstrated that). Similarly, Americans want their President to be great, or at least admirable. For all the dissent and despair, Americans are not yet cynics, and have not yet lost their capacity for enthusiasm. Voters are looking for a presidential hero, a figure who will not only accept the U.S. assumption that one man is equal to the task, but who will also be responsive to the people as well as responsible for them.

Will they find him? If the present field does not look brilliant, history proves that Presidents, like monarchs, show their true qualities only once they are in power. At any rate, in seeking the ideal man for the White House, or at least an approximation of the ideal, the electorate can ultimately rely only on a little reason, much instinct, and a great deal of luck--which is sometimes known as destiny.

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