Has the West Run Out of Statesmen?

Political scholar Daniel J. Mahoney discusses the characteristics of a statesman

In his writings, Cicero outlined the requirements for being a statesman. Andrea Izzotti/Shutterstock

Daniel J. Mahoney has known a few statesmen and a host of politicians during his decades in and around the politics of the West. He points out there’s a difference between the two, and there’s also the tyrant who tends to separate himself or herself from the two despite originating in the same circles. The age of COVID-19 has indeed revealed a number of tyrants in America and throughout the rest of the West.

Although there are the ongoing battles of liberty and control between citizens and governments during this ongoing crisis, Mahoney indicates a crisis may be just what is needed for statesmen to arise.

“I don’t think statesmanship just arises in a time of crisis, but it is much more likely to,” he said during an interview on The Sons of History podcast. “Sometimes, a great statesman is a longtime politician who finally gets an opportunity in a time of crisis. Over the last two centuries, there seems to be a direct connection between the severity of the political scene and the necessity for great men to come to the forefront.”

The Statesman, the Politician, and the Tyrant

But what exactly is a statesman? And how do they differ from a typical, even influential, politician? Also, how do they differ from the ambitious leader who tends toward tyranny, yet accomplishes great feats?

“The statesman exhibits the qualities of character and soul that separates them from the ordinary political leader, and especially from the rapacious tyrant,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they’re saints.”

Mahoney, whose recent book “The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation” identifies several statesmen from the past two centuries, admits that when we think of statesmen, we’re greatly limiting our options of people. The requirements to be a statesman are far more demanding than those of the typical politician. He said the statesman is required to act in a serious, energetic, and noble way, but must also think seriously about politics, history, and human nature.

In the book, Mahoney highlights Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Vaclav Havel, but he points readers back to Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great orator and politician of the Roman Republic. Cicero was known as a political philosopher, whose writings described what was required to be a statesman.

“He sort of described the Churchillian spirit before it embodied a figure like Lincoln or Churchill,” he said. “He was also an acting statesman who tried to save the Roman Republic at a time when it was collapsing and it was under the specter of a new kind of charismatic despotism of Caesar.”

Mahoney said that a statesman must be someone who avoids the pitfalls of extreme despotism or ideology and displays a gift for practical judgment, something the Greeks called prudence. He said the modern view of prudence has defined it as being tepid or merely practicing self-restraint. For Cicero, Washington, and Lincoln, however, he said prudence was considered a high political and moral virtue that gave them the capacity to know how to do the right thing at the right time. He added that the difference between tyrants and statesmen is that the tyrant’s ambition is disconnected from principle, while the statesman combines thought with action, and ambition with respect for human liberty

The Current State of Statesmanship

Although the history of statesmen goes back thousands of years, Mahoney believes the best examples are relatively recent. As a caveat to that belief, unfortunately, he added that he doesn’t see any statesmen today. He said there’s a very reasonable explanation for this political misfortune that has led to what he calls “a crisis of self-confidence.”

“Education,” he stated. “We don’t educate in American political thought to any considerable extent. We don’t study the great speeches of the Western tradition. We don’t teach rhetoric. We don’t teach an account of American history that is sympathetic. A lot of it is self-loathing.”

On a brighter note, he does believe that the West still possesses enough resources to cultivate human greatness, but added that if America and the West continue to destroy their civilizational and civic heritages, then it makes statesmanship less likely. Nonetheless, he is hopeful.

“We need someone in the future—not a Caesar saving us—but somebody who can articulate the promise of the American Republic,” he said. “And I think that will come. It will happen because it has to happen.”