comparatively speaking, a mere handful in every community. The truth seems to be that the overwhelming majority of people have little desire to assume positions of power and responsibility.[1]
Conditions of political leadership, of course, change, but politics pursued as a professional career has been and always will be a risky game. Sometimes reluctance to serve as political leader has been so strong that elections have been conducted by lot as in the Greek cities. Even in modern times individuals have often been “drafted” from plough or workshop or office to fill offices. The point is, not that there is ever really lacking a sufficient number of persons willing, and even eager, to assume leadership, but rather that the ease with which such persons usually acquire and keep power, and the manifold ways by which they expand the authority originally delegated to them, would be impossible unless there were comparatively so few others interested in competing for the posts of leadership. So long as they are permitted to grumble, most people are gratefully relieved to find someone to do their chores, whether they are household chores or political chores. Politics is a messy business, and life is short. We put up with a great many evils in order to avoid the trouble of abolishing them.
This feeling is natural even if it is not wise. Political leadership is a full-time career with little opportunity for relaxation or cultivation of other interests. In retrospect few intelligent men who have enjoyed power have felt that its rewards were commensurate with the personal sacrifices it entailed. According to one of Plato’s myths, Odysseus, the crafty politician, chooses as his lot in his next reincarnation on earth a humble life in a forgotten corner far from the alarms of politics. What is true for the successful politician is also true for his rival. Serious political opposition is likewise a full-time activity. In political struggle, therefore, the integrated individual who has a plurality of interests, which he is loath to sacrifice on the sullied altars of politics, is always at a disadvantage. So is the sensitive and high-minded idealist who shrinks from the awful responsibility of deciding, quite literally, other people’s lives, and from the moral compromises and occasional ruthlessness required even by statesmanship of a high order. Further, political questions are difficult. We accept a great many decisions because we have not
- ↑ Cf. the remarks of Robert Michels in Political Parties, Eng. trans., pp. 49 ff. New York, 1915.
