Tuesday, February 4, 1997
READING:
Literature plays an important role in influencing politicians,
often in negative ways By Maureen Dowd
New York Times
Ever since Jimmy Carter went up the mountain with tomes on
leadership and came down with malaise, it has made me nervous to
see presidents fooling around with books.
With pols, a little reading can be a dangerous thing.
In 1990, George Bush had read only the first 200 pages of Martin
Gilbert’s 843-page book on the Second World War  "a great,
big, thick history," Bush called it  when he began throwing
around overwrought comparisons of Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
Lee Atwater used to carry in his briefcase "The Art of War" by
Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese warrior-philosopher who dropped pearls
like: "For the impact of armed forces to be like stones thrown on
eggs is a matter of emptiness and fullness."
Ross Perot also loved martial piffle, finding inspiration in
"Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun," by Wess Roberts, a
California psychologist: "When on the hunt, be prepared to hunt."
"No bleached bone of a battle-lost Hun must go unnoticed as we
prepare for the future."
It’s almost a relief to know a politician is feigning his
reading  swanning around with a title that sounds suitably
weighty.
Whenever anyone asked what Vice President Quayle was reading,
the answer stayed comfortingly the same, year in, year out: Paul
Johnson’s "Modern Times," a conservative history of the 20th
century. (I wonder if he ever finished it.)
Bob Dole was blunt about literature as P.R. accessory. Asked
what book he’d like to curl up with on a free evening, he replied,
"Unlimited Partners," the autobiography he wrote with his wife,
Elizabeth.
Now Bill Clinton would seem like the sort of pol you could trust
with books. But it is odd that his favorite book is not a work of
fiction or policy, but of ancient philosophy, the "Meditations" of
Marcus Aurelius. Why would this least Stoic of Americans dwell on
this most Stoic of Romans? Marcus was an emperor who chose to have
no clothes, who believed in simplicity of wardrobe, diet and
speech, who hated carping, bad temper and polls (known then as
"sounding the minds of the neighbors.")
In his first term, Clinton was so busy with New Age gurus, he
ignored the lessons of his Old Age guru. But perhaps the messy
burden of Paula Jones and John Huang has convinced the president of
the need to find some philosophical distance.
Here, summarized, a dozen epigrams of Marcus that will serve
Potus (the smarmy Washington insider way of referring to president
of the United States) very well.
1. Work toward mastery of self and vacillation in nothing.
2. Within 10 days you will appear a god even to those to whom
today you seem a beast or a baboon if you return to your
principles.
3. Don’t any more discuss what the good man is like, but be
good.
4. If it is not right, don’t do it; if it is not true, don’t say
it.
5. Let no one any longer hear you finding fault with your life
in a palace.
6. Turn inward to your self, whenever you blame the traitor or
the ungrateful, for the fault is plainly yours.
7. Disdain the flesh: blood and bones, a twisted skein of
nerves, veins, arteries.
8. Perceive at last that you have within yourself something
stronger and more divine than the passions – fright, suspicion,
appetite? – which make a downright puppet of you.
9. The simple and good man ought to be entirely such. The
affectation of simplicity is like a razor.
10. Nothing is more wretched than the man who seeks to sound the
minds of his neighbors. Socrates used to call the opinions of the
multitude "bogies," things to frighten children. What need have you
of a suggestion, when it is possible to see what ought to be done
and proceed on this path without turning back?
11. Perfection of character possesses this: Not to act a
part.
12. The man in a flutter for after-fame fails to picture to
himself that each of those who remember him will also very shortly
die. Near at hand is your forgetting all; near too, all forgetting
you.
Nobody said it would be easy, Mr. President. And it can’t be fun
having a critic whose been dead for 1,800 years. Maybe you should
stick with Easy Rawlins.