The Art of Power
0812979486
Jon Meacham
Notes
Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators. They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma…This was a key element of Jefferson’s vision: He wrote beautifully of the pursuit of the perfect, but he knew good when he saw it. He would not make the two enemies.
Jefferson believed history was “philosophy teaching by examples.”…For him, politics was informed by philosophy, but one could achieve the good only by putting philosophy into action. To do so required the acquisition of power.
To write public papers or to negotiate quietly, away from the floor of an assembly or even away from a largish committee, enabled a politician to exert his will with less risk of creating animosity…“The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye.” …He was always in favor of whatever means would improve the chances of his cause of the hour…,He would do what it took, within reason, to arrange the world as he wanted it to be.
…but the political language of war had to celebrate what had been done and offer hope for darker moments.
“Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.” – John Adams on his recommendation for Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.
[Head] “The art of life is the art of avoiding pain: and he is the best pilot who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which he is beset. Pleasure is always before us: but misfortune is at our side: while running after that, this arrests us. The most effectual means of being secure against pain is to retire within ourselves, and to suffice for our own happiness… [Heart] I do not know that I ever did a good thing on your suggestion, or a dirty one without it. I do forever then disclaim your interference in my province. Fill paper as you please with triangles and squares: try how many ways you can hang and combine them together…We are not immortal ourselves, my friend: how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn: no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence, and we must acquiesce. “ Jefferson on the battle between his Head and Heart…He knew though that life was best lived among friends in the pursuit of large causes, understanding that pain was the price for anything worth having.
…a recurring feature of American politics: a successful president’s discomfort with the less respectable men and means that got him to victory. There is usually a moment in the life of a new president when he begins to see himself not as an aspirant desperate to win but as a statesman above the squalor and the sweat of actual vote getting. Rising men do not like to be reminded of the smell of the stables: dignitaries dislike recollections of the dust through which they have come. The polemicist had been useful on the journey, but there was apparently no place for his acidic attacks now that the popular votes were cast and his machinations had been put on display at trial.
His experience of the past two decades in foreign policy had also taught him that time often resolved the issues of the hour…”procrastination includes the whole compass of Mr. Jefferson’s policy, which I believe to be really the case.” – John Quincy Adams.
When people carelessly or snobbishly deride political parties, they overlook the fact that the party system of Government is one of the greatest methods of unification and of teaching people to think in common terms of our civilization.
The author was too biased, often glamorizing his successes and glossing over Jefferson’s personal and political failures. The founding and growth of political parties, to the detriment of Jefferson’s friends, came off as wanting and duplicitous, particularly when Jefferson would protest that he was not being manipulative.
Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life
- Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
- Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
- NEver spend money before you have it.
- Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
- Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
- We never repent of having eaten too little.
- Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
- How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
- Take things always by the smooth handle.
- When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
Jefferson may have listed these as guides but mostly practiced the opposite of these maxims.
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