Op-Ed Columns

Spent an hour or so with the governor at my office last week, just hours before that lover of politics and of all humankind, Tim Russert, died suddenly. The two events put me in a reflective mood.

What I came up with was this:

Politics is that universally despised but fascinating form of theater and high-level, game-show competition performed by two or more actors of varying ability with the stamina of tri-athletes, which allows one of them to govern.

Governing is 95 percent of what a governor or president does, which is beyond public view but actually affects the needs and expectations of the people. This work is subject to constant scrutiny and criticism.

Gov. Bob Riley was here with his top economic cabinet officer, Neal Wade, to see how the state could help accelerate development in northeast Alabama, especially at our multi-billion-dollar asset, the former Fort McClellan.

Our discussion was interrupted by a call the governor had to take. It was about a large institution in crisis, whose collapse would hurt many citizens and imperil financial institutions.

It was a pleasure to watch him make his case with concentration, logic and feeling, as he had earlier about innovative ideas for public education and a creative possibility for the state's economic wasteland, the Black Belt.

As I often do when thinking about government and politics, I turned to a small book written in 1929 by one of the only philosophers in the news business, Walter Lippmann. In A Preface to Morals, he distinguishes between politicians and statesmen thus:

"Sooner or later the politician, because he deals in unrealities, is found out. Then he either goes to jail, or he is tolerated cynically as a picturesque and amiable scoundrel …

"The words of a statesman prove to have value because they express not the desire of the moment but the conditions under which desires can actually be adjusted to reality… It requires the courage which is possible only in a mind that is detached from the agitations of the moment."

Great reporters like Lippmann and Russert revel in the great democratic pageant of politics because, among other things, they are uniquely qualified to perform the beautiful, cruel surgery that separates buffoons, demagogues, goofballs and idiots from statesmen.

Knowledge gained through years of observation and hours of preparation, sometimes seeing politics from inside, the perspective of the statesman himself, gives an analyst like Russert authority to whisk away the screen, revealing Oz for the pompous old man he was.

Neither of the candidates who would have faced the challenge of a series of probing conversations with the NBC editor and anchor qualifies as a cheap politician, but neither wears the mantle of statesmanship yet.

The American presidency is an office of such symbolic power, one that frames the moral direction, the parameters of the possible for its citizens and affects the daily lives and expectations of millions worldwide.

A friend, the theologian Michael Novak, describes the office — part priest, part king, part national father — in his book, Choosing Our King, in a paragraph bristling with emotive power:

"The president of the United States is one of the great symbolic powers known to human history. His actions seep irrepressibly into our hearts … That is why we wrestle against him, rise up in hatred … or, alternatively, feel good, feel proud, as though his achievements were ours, his wit the unleashing of powers of our own."

Only a few of the consummate actors who have occupied the Oval Office have had that power over us. Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton at times come to mind.

In this turn of history, Barack Obama seems to have had the prophetic sense to feel and envelop enormous crowds with the feeling that he knows what is wrong and can lead us in a more fruitful, satisfying direction.

If the young Illinois senator can parse the aura he has created into the ribs, nerve and muscle of policies that a majority can understand and voluntarily follow, he can win the most powerful office on earth.

Then the real work begins, the kind of work an able leader such as Bob Riley does, where there are no banners, bunting and cheering crowds — the work of a statesman.