Integrity or Craft

In Stanley Fish's article, "Think Again: Integrity or Craft: The Leadership Question", the prominent American literary theorist describes his displeasure with the idea of asking the candidates, who are running for political office, questions that are derived to "go beyond politics". Fish voices his disposition on the senselessness of the attempt to ask political candidates questions that are not relevant to the positions that they are vying for. "It is as if you were looking for an office manager and decided to go beyond organizational skills by inquiring into the applicants' tastes in books or music." Stanley Fish is trying to prove his point that these questions are asinine by giving the reader analogies that may help them understand the negative position that he has decided to take. This position is depicted with power and seems very impermeable from its beginning.

Fish is in complete disagreement with Katie Couric and CBS on whether to ask significant questions such as, "would you favor a flat tax rate?" or "Do you have a plan for extricating us from Iraq without further destabilizing the Middle East?", instead of asking questions such as, "When was the last time you lost your temper?" or "Who is the single most impressive person you've ever met?". Fish believes that these questions have zero significance on their candidacy and the political purpose that the candidates intend to pursue. Fish continues to grasp his position firmly and suggests a few questions of his own that he believes would be sufficient for the circumstance.

Fish claims that Katie Couric is not blame for these "softball" questions that will be asked, but it was CBS News that devised the list of questions in response to a poll of prospective voters. CBS claims that these voters want to make sure that the next president of America should be a person of integrity, strong morals and great character. Stanley Fish starts to place blame on the news group for the conception of the irrelevant questions and tries to free Katie Couric from being held accountable for creating the "soft" questions. The reader will start to see Fish's firm position loosen up slightly as he continues to address the situation.

Integrity, in Fish's mind, is "the quality of standing up for the same values in every situation, no matter whom you're speaking to", in which he does not believe is a substantial qualification for dealing with the dishonest and jeopardous realm of domestic and international diplomacy. Fish also believes that if the president were to hold very strong morals, then he or she would be too rigid for the compromise that is essential to political negotiation. Fish continues to combat this theory by saying that. "...if character were really everything, candidates would be judged by their relationships with family and friends (Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton might not fare too well if that were the measure) rather than by their ability first to recognize, and then to deal with, the many problems facing the nation." Fish attempts to express his personal beliefs on integrity and what this word means to him. He is starting to build a foundation for why his tone begins to change as the column continues. Fish is trying to obtain the readers support for the metamorphosis in his, once firm, position through building the reader's trust by giving the reader a glance into his own integrity and morals.

After slaughtering the significance of the interview, Fish takes a few steps back and rethinks his negative position. Surrendering to the logic of CBS News' headwork to present these questions; Fish states that come voting time, political policies and positions may not be involved in the reasoning of the voters to decide their voting position. He sees the interview's significance from a different perspective and considers that the voting public may hold a higher importance to the integrity and virtue of the candidates, instead of their flimsy political nature. It was almost as if Fish had a light bulb turn on in his mind and quickly applied this new found reasoning. Fish is continuing to build a double-sided opinion on the interview that will be given to the presidential candidates.

In Fish's opinion, if the voting public does vote on integrity and virtue, then the voting public will have taken a position on an ancient, philosophical quarrel between a group that believes that the best person will make the best leader and a group that thinks that the best leader is the person who has enough experience in their field to get the job done. Fish ponders the argument on whether to start with the moral interior and to let morals shine through their performance or to leave the interior complexities and spirituality of the candidates to their therapists and pastors. He claims that both alternatives have their own meaningful power and that Milton attempted to teach us that when men first felt the need to create a governing power to ensure civil order, they chose their leader based upon his wisdom and integrity. Fish then explains Milton's beliefs that if Adam had not fallen, men would never have had to choose, that all men were born free in the resemblance of God and were born to command and not to obey. By acknowledging Milton's perspective in this column, Fish lets the reader obtain a wise and trustworthy view that is neutral to the current circumstance and, also, that which can be compared to the current circumstance.

Thomas Hobbes, Milton's philosophical opposite, acknowledged that the trouble was just that. Hobbes believes that with thinking in the manner that all men were born to command and not to obey, men will begin to prey on one another and produce an instability that will cause most life to be short and brutish. Hobbes does agree, however, with the fact that all men are created equal and equally free, but if men are to live free, they must keep to their own devices. Hobbes did not agree with Milton's idea of the natural goodness of all mankind, instead he opted for the solution to grant one man all the powers in the state, provided that this leader would uphold civil order and "that he secure the property of every man against the depredations of his neighbors and protect the country from its foreign enemies." With this example of an argument between two great thinkers, Fish creates an analogy that is very suitable to this current situation. The argument between Milton and Hobbes is comparable to the Couric interview in a way that broadens the reader's outlook and opens their mind to see the different sides of an argument that could easily be observed with the Couric interview.

Hobbes claims that the leader's, or sovereign's, ability to keep his word to uphold this civil order has nothing to do with his moral character. He also says that "the question of who is the better man has no place in the condition of mere nature and everything to do with his political skills." Hobbes declares that the capability to lead is different than the capability to be a good and moral man. The more important quality for this leader is in his aptitude and not his character. Hobbes believes that moral character could easily handicap a political leader by clouding their swiftness in resolution.

It was Machiavelli who said that, "everyone always proclaims how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith and to live with integrity and not with craft", but Machiavelli believed that "everyone" was incorrect. He claims that a prince should keep has faith until he finds out that the people he has given it to begin working against him. "In those circumstances", Machiavelli states, "a wise lord cannot, or ought not to keep faith when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer." Also, that there will never come a time where a prince would be expected to look passed certain instances of betrayal because of his morality. Fish then states that Machiavelli believed in the prince being able to disguise his loss of faith in the times of betrayal and for the prince to be a great pretender, in that losing his faith would never show on the exterior of his being. If the prince were to lose his faith, no one but himself should detect it.

In a nutshell, when dealing in matters of politics and leadership, craft must come before integrity, but in the moment of faithlessness, one must have sufficient enough craft to fabricate a believable integrity. Fish states that Machiavelli's hero in this regard was a blatantly, corrupt Pope Alexander IV, who did nothing but betray men around him, but his betrayals succeed because of his understanding of the debauched side of mankind and its significance to the well-being of the government itself. A leader must make impersonal decisions from time to time in order to keep the balance of order.

Fish then regains his contemporary thought on the Katie Couric interview and declares that he does not wish to see Katie Couric asking Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama questions that resemble in any way the questions that Hobbes and Machiavelli would have wanted to ask, rather than asking the questions prepared for her from several polls that survey the opinions of ordinary citizens. If Couric were to ask these questions, Fish believes that a "truly Machiavellian leader" would refuse to answer and probably become insulted and disgusted by them. When asked questions in which could have answers that would damage the trust of the candidate by the voting public, the candidate should hold his or her tongue cautiously, rather than losing the appeal of appearing honorable.

Yet, Fish explains that he does, in fact, hold on to the hope that whomever the voting public does decide to put into office and into power of our country have the particular skill of a card of the suit bearing such figures and in his eyes be somewhat the match to the late ruler, Alexander IV. Fish claims that the decorum of the candidacy does need the rhetoric of integrity and sincerity. Fish ends with his affirmation that "the performance of political duties, especially at the highest level, requires something quite different." A leader should remain to appear honorable in the eye of the public while making the necessary impersonal decisions beyond the eye of the public.

In my work, The Republic, Socrates and Thrasymachus engage in a similar argument at the end of the first book, in which, the two men plead their cases on what makes a ruler just. Socrates states that "justice includes helping friends, but the just man would never do harm to anybody". Thrasymachus disagrees, declaring that "what is good for the stronger" is just. This argument is very comparable to the argument that Fish portrays in his column about the CBS News interview. Whether the term, just, is defined as being virtuous and morally sound or making impersonal choices for the greater good of the whole is an argument that rages on to this very day. The need to posses a faithful ruler against the need for possessing a dispassionate ruler, in a democracy, belongs solely to the desire of the voting public. It is the majority who must decide that which essence beckons them.

Later in my work, Socrates states that the ruler need not be just, but creative in his decisions to construct just laws in an attempt to uphold civil order. This theory rings true today with the American public knowing not the interior of their leader, but the exterior choices that they adopt for the good of the whole. The leader of America should not allow his personal beliefs and morals to discombobulate his or her decision-making skills. The decisions made should be created with the intention of conserving the order and betterment of the whole. It would be sufficient to grant power to a philosophical ruler, who will makes his or her choices with the good of the whole in mind, but there is no grey area in this matter. The integrity of the candidates will show with the political decisions that they will decide upon. The public can only hope that the candidate that they choose will be able to examine all possible outcomes and reactions from all perspectives in order to make truly just decisions.

Works Cited

Jowett, Benjamin. The Republic by Plato. 1994-2000. 21 February 2008

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html.>

Fish, Stanley. "Integrity or Craft: The Leadership Question". Weblog entry. The New York

The New York Times. 9 December 2007. 19 February 2008. com/2007/12/09/integrity-or-craft-the-leadership-question/>