1 Storing, Herbert J., “American Statesmanship: Old and New,” in Bureaucrats, Policy Analysts, Statesmen: Who Leads?, ed. Goldwin, Robert A. (Washington, D.C.: AEI Press, 1980), p. 88.Google Scholar

2 “Statesmanship” rarely appears in any thematic way in recent works of liberal theory (Bruce Ackerman, discussed herein, is a notable exception). Typical is the approach of John Rawls, who briefly discusses “limitations on the principle of participation” (Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice [Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971], pp. 228–34Google Scholar). But Rawls finds little for statesmen to do: conflicts should be minimaland easily dealt with procedurally “under favorable conditions” (p. 230). Nowhere does Rawls discuss the possibility that securing and maintaining such “favorable conditions” might be a statesman's chief task.

3 Montesquieu, notes that “as execution has the limits of its own nature, it is useless to restrict it” (The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Cohler, Anne M., Miller, Basia Carolyn, and Stone, Harold Samuel [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], p. 162)Google Scholar. If statesmanship is always needed in politics, it is better to give it a legitimate, constitutional place than to require that its exercise be illegal or extraconstitutional.

4 See Dahl, Robert A., Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 52–79,155Google Scholar; Barber, Benjamin R., “Neither Leaders Nor Followers: Citizenship Under Strong Democracy,” in Essays in Honor of James MacGregor Burns, ed. Beschloss, Michael R. and Cronin, Thomas E. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), pp. 117ffGoogle Scholar.; and Ackerman, Bruce A., Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), pp. 24, 31–32, 235.Google Scholar

5 Wolin, Sheldon S., “Executive Liberation” [Review of Harvey C.Mansfield's Taming the Prince], in Studies in American Political Development 6 (1992): 215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 Wolin, , “Executive Liberation,” p. 214.Google Scholar

9 Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, pp. 31, 4.Google Scholar

10 Barber, Benjamin R., The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 209Google Scholar; see also Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, pp. 25–26, 59–60.Google Scholar

11 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The First and Second Discourses, trans, and ed. Gourevitch, Victor (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 66Google Scholar, emphasis added.

12 Jefferson, Thomas, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984), p. 1306.Google Scholar

13 Dahl, , virtually alone, concedes this point (Democracy and Its Critics, p. 56).Google Scholar

14 See Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 119.Google Scholar

15 See Barber, Benjamin R., Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, 4th printing with a new preface (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 235–37Google Scholar; see also Dahl, , Democracy and Us Critics, pp. 78–79.Google Scholar

16 Barber, , Strong Democracy, p. xii; cf. xxi, xxiv, 24Google Scholar: but cf. Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, p. 117Google Scholar where statesmanship is said to complement citizenship.

17 Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 10.Google Scholar

18 Ackerman, Bruce, We the People: Foundations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 6–7,13,19, 269.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., pp. 7, 22.

20 Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 289Google Scholar, emphasis added; cf. p. 302.

21 Warren, Mark E., “Deliberative Democracy and Authority,” American Political Science Review 90:1 (03 1996): pp. 46–47, 51, 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 49, 53.

23 Walzer, Michael, “Democracy and Philosophy,” Political Theory 9 (1981): 383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Barber, Benjamin R., An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), p. 185.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 74–75. Ackerman also stacks the deck against the need for a relatively independent statesman in claiming, against the historical record, that an “entire generation” sought to repudiate slavery (Ackerman, , We the People, p. 19Google Scholar).

26 Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 124.Google Scholar

27 See also Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 2. 87–89, 95–99, 123–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, p. 389.Google Scholar

28 Plamenatz, John, Democracy and Illusion (London: Longman Group, 1973), p. 56Google Scholar; see also Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, p. 114.Google Scholar

29 Locke, , Two Treatises, 2. 54,1. 58Google Scholar; also Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

30 See Barber, “Neither Leaders Nor Followers.”

31 Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, p. 144.Google Scholar

32 Mansfield, Harvey C., The Spirit of Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Babbitt, Irving, Democracy and Leadership (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1924), p. 61Google Scholar; Wolin, Sheldon, Politics and Vision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 414–19Google Scholar. Storing argues that not only for Woodrow Wilson but even for the Founders “government is reduced to administration” (“American Statesmanship,” p. 97). Once the contentious question of the proper end of government has been settled (in favor of securing individual rights), the scope of statesmanship is swiftly reduced to economic reasoning about means. See Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, bk. 20.Google Scholar

33 Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 126Google Scholar; The Conquest of Politics, p. 3.

34 Barber, , An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 185–86Google Scholar; see also The Conquest of Politics, p. 200.

35 Wolin, Sheldon, The Presence of the Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 118.Google Scholar

36 See Tocqueville, , Democracy in America, pp. 197–98.Google Scholar

37 Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, pp. 17, 105Google Scholar; Strong Democracy, p. 121. Barber goes so far as to contend that “arbitrary whimsy” is a fault of individuals more than of “popular will.” See Barber, , “Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent,” in Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Rosenblum, Nancy L. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 57.Google Scholar

38 See Storing, , “American Statesmanship,” p. 88.Google Scholar

39 For leading contemporary statements of the objections to the “rational” foundations on which the older case for statesmanship are said to rest (from which the complaints in the text are drawn), see, in addition to the works of Ackerman, Barber, Dahl, Rawls, Warren, and Wolin already cited, Rorty, Richard “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,” in The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, ed. Peterson, Merrill D. and Vaughan, Robert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Walzer, Michael, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

40 Walzer, , “Democracy and Philosophy,” p. 393Google Scholar; see too Barber, , Strong Democracy, p. 165Google Scholar; The Conquest of Politics, p. 14; Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, p. 75Google Scholar; Rawls, , “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985): 230Google Scholar; and Wolin, , “Political Theory as a Vocation,” in Machiavelli and the Nature of Political Thought, ed. Fleisher, Martin (New York: Atheneum Press, 1972), pp. 28, 37Google Scholar; The Presence of the Past, p. 106.

41 Fish, Stanley, “When Principles Get in the Way,” New York Times, 26 12 1996, p. A25.Google Scholar

42 Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 303.Google Scholar

43 See Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, p. 151.Google Scholar

44 Barber, , “Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent,” p. 60Google Scholar; An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 61–62.

45 See Barber, , “Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent,” p. 67.Google Scholar

46 Fish, , “When Principles Get in the Way,” p. A25Google Scholar. This echoes the old charge of the highly moralistic Adeimantus against philosophy (Plato, Republic 487Google Scholard). Fish's argument suggests that he also shares with Adeimantus the view that, since there is no reason to be just, his own justice must be the result of a “divine nature” that somehow simply “knows” what justice demands (see 366c).

47 See Beiner, Ronald, What's the Matter with Liberalism? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), chap. 7.Google Scholar

48 See Johannsen, Robert W., ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 65.Google Scholar

49 See Beiner, Ronald, Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Barber, The Conquest of Politics. For a critique of these and related misapprehensions of political judgment, see my “Aristotle and the Recovery of Political Judgment,” American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 409–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Montesquieu, , The Spirit of the Laws, p. 12Google Scholar; Wolin, The Presence of the Past, chap. 6.

51 Locke, John, The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed., Axtell, James L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 400Google Scholar; Tarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 5–7Google Scholaret passim.

52 Barber, himself notes this in The Conquest of Politics, p. 209Google Scholar. And so even Woodrow Wilson, accused by Barber of being a “strong leader” who set the tone for a “stewardship of daring” (“Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 118), insists that, in a democracy, “public opinion must be truckled to” (Wilson, , Leaders of Men, ed. Motter, T. H. Vail [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952], p. 40Google Scholar).

53 Some thinkers, such as Johann Fichte and Joseph Raz (see “Government by Consent,” in Authority Revisited: Nomos XXIX, ed. Pennock, J. Roland and Chapman, John W. [New York: New York University Press, 1987], pp. 79, 90–92Google Scholar), have indeed taken the extreme tack of claiming that right reason more or less circumvents the need for democratic deliberation, expression, and consent. Others deny to democratic authorities any guidance from reason independent of democratic expression (Warren, , “Deliberative Democracy and Authority,” p. 54Google Scholar). Warren's reason for arguing thus is that “there are no political mechanisms that would facilitate an understanding of [such] reasons by subjects” (p. 54). This objection, however, overlooks the art of rhetoric which is intended precisely to educate citizens and thereby to “facilitate an understanding” of reasons.

54 See Stephen Holmes, “The Permanent Structure of Antiliberal Thought,” in Rosenblum, Liberalism and the Moral Life.

55 Ackerman, , Social Justice, pp. 236,249–50, 255.Google Scholar

56 Barber, , “Neither Leaders nor Followers,” p. 128.Google Scholar

57 Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 289Google Scholar, emphasis added; see too 319.

58 Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, p. 140.Google Scholar

59 Ackerman even comes to suggest that statesmanship may sometimes have to transcend legal limitations in order to secure the common good (see his account of the Founding, We the People, pp. 173–79, 195; see also Locke, , Two Treatises, 2. 160Google Scholar on “prerogative”).

60 Ackerman, , We the People, p. 314.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., pp. 297–305.

62 Ibid., p. 44.

63 Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 262Google Scholar; see too 305.

64 Ibid., pp. 250, 312.

65 Ackerman, , We the People, p. 10, 51–52.Google Scholar

66 Ibid., pp. 14, 16–32; Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 368Google Scholar. Ackerman rejects the notion of any meaningful “progress” in history (We the People, p. 220).

67 Ackerman, , We the People, p. 15.Google Scholar

68 Nietzsche, , Nachlass, vol. 14, p. 206.Google Scholar

69 Ackerman, , We the People, p. 57.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., p. 139.

71 Ibid., p. 159.

72 Where Ackerman earlier relied on “neutral conversation” to establish a policy's legitimacy (Social Justice, p. 319), he now puts his faith in the “larger synthesis” in which two contradictory theses are combined without any admitted loss or dilution of principle (We the People, pp. 25, 29, 98). Rational political judgment, that is, remains unwelcome.

73 Ackerman, , We the People, p. 146.Google Scholar

74 Ibid., pp. 60–61. As it will be the courts (or the “legal community”) that will engineer the “interpretive synthesis” that will guide political decisions (p. 162), it is hard to avoid the conclusion that executive statesmanship will in the end be reduced to executing, not the will of the Legislative branch, or of the people, but of the courts.

75 Ackerman asserts that it is fruitless to concern oneself with neutral dialogue in the midst of even a liberal revolution and asks only that statesmen “try to make the liberal principle of dialogue a living political reality as soon as possible” (Social Justice, p. 304). Moreover, he routinely situates his character “Statesman” in (private) dialogues, not in the rough and rumble of public life (see 238–39, 251–52). This nicely captures the overdrawn separation of power politics from deliberation in Ackerman's thought. For talk, in fact, need not be “fruitless” amid struggle: Jefferson penned the tolerably effective Declaration of Independence in the midst of a liberal revolution. Conversely, “talk” that utilizes promises, threats, etc. (i.e., power) in support of its argument proper may well be required even after the revolution is complete.

76 See, e.g., Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 275Google Scholar; Barber, , Strong Democracy, p. 170Google Scholar; Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, pp. 163–75, 299–308Google Scholar; Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 198.Google Scholar

77 Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, pp. 231,456n3Google Scholar, emphasis added.

78 See Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, p. 69.Google Scholar

79 See Storing, , “American Statesmanship,” p. 109.Google Scholar

80 Barber, , “Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent,” p. 66Google Scholar, emphasis added; see also Wolin, , “Political Theory as a Vocation,” p. 48.Google Scholar

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82 Charnwood, Lord, Abraham Lincoln (London: Constable & Co., 1919), p. 152Google Scholar. Compare Barber's praise of Lao-tse's dictum: “of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, [the people] will say ‘we did this ourselves’” (Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 121Google Scholar). Lincoln, like Aristotle, treated speech as the lifeblood of decent political life, and so was able—at the slight cost of suffering a bit of ingratitude—to bring the American people to take a far greater legitimate share of the sense of accomplishment than Laotse's good leader.

83 Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, p. 69.Google Scholar

84 Wolin, , “Political Theory as a Vocation,” p. 45Google Scholar; see too Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, pp. 17, 201Google Scholar; Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, pp. 337, 348n7.Google Scholar

85 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987), p. 43Google Scholar. From Burke's denial that an individual can found a regime, Barber seems mistakenly to conclude that Burke denied an individual could rule one. See Burke, , Reflections, p. 53.Google Scholar

86 See Beiner, , Political Judgment, pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

87 See Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 122Google Scholar; Rawls, , A Theory of Justice, p. 230.Google Scholar

88 See Tulis, Jeffrey K., The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 110–111,117–37.Google Scholar

89 Barber, , The Conquest of Politics, p. 208.Google Scholar

90 See also Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 274.Google Scholar

91 Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 120.Google Scholar

92 Edley, Christopher Jr, “Affirmative Action and the Rights Rhetoric Trap,” in The Moral founddtions of Civil Rights, ed. Fullinwider, Robert k. and Mills, Claudia (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), p. 57.Google Scholar

93 All it requires is the assistance of a “facilitating leader,” who quickly teaches the citizens “critical self-sufficiency and the ability to think independently”—and then disappears (Barber, , “Neither Leaders Nor Followers,” p. 125Google Scholar). Presumably colleges, relieved of this once arduous responsibility, could focus wholly on football.

94 Barber, , An Aristocracy of Everyone, p. 13Google Scholar. Similarly, Walzer, in his otherwise critical review of Barber, claims that it is easier to understand justice than “pollution” (Walzer, , “Flight From Philosophy [Review of Barber's The Conquest of Politics],” The New York Review of Books, 2 02 1989, p. 44Google Scholar). Contrast this outlook with that expressed by Dahl's spokesman for the older view, Aristos: “I think it's probably easier to become an excellent mathematician than an excellent ruler” (Dahl, , Democracy and Its Critics, p. 63Google Scholar). Nietzsche, for one, deplored this trend: “one now knows in Europe what Socrates thought he did not know and what that famous old serpent once promised to teach—today one ‘knows’ what is good and evil” (Beyond Good and Evil, aph. 202).

95 Political thinking can be “vigorous and inspire decisive action” (Barber, , Strong Democracy, p. 170Google Scholar).

96 Douglass, Frederick, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1983 [1881]), p. 498.Google Scholar

97 Ackerman, , Social Justice, p. 21Google Scholar, emphasis in original.

98 Storing, , “American Statesmanship,” p. 98.Google Scholar

99 Barber, Benjamin, “The Compromised Republic: Public Purposelessness in America,” in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, ed. Horwitz, Robert H., 3rd ed. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986), p. 61Google Scholar. Cf. Barber's own excellent appreciation of Truman's statesmanship that was neither authoritarian nor anxiety-laden in The Conquest of Politics, chap. 5.

100 As Barber claims (Strong Democracy, p. 167).

101 Locke, , Two Treatises, secs. 2.160, 2. 57.Google Scholar

102 For all his defense of statesmanship, then, it comes as no surprise that Ackerman finally agrees with Arendt on “the most important point”: modern men and women must learn to take “citizenship” seriously (We the People, p. 220, emphasis added).