Romney Fails the Confucian Test

First, let me stipulate: all politicians evade and dissemble and lie.  And that happens in all regime types: democratic and authoritarian. But within that broad reality, and focusing here on the American political experience, Mitt Romney is setting a new standard for - how shall we say? - insincerity, in the current US presidential race.  And that, from a Confucian point of view, is a failure of the first degree.

Romney's basic problem is that his earlier political experience, as Governor of my state, Massachusetts, yielded policies and decisions that are labeled "moderate" in the American lexicon.  Health insurance legislation; a ban on assault weapons; an effectively pro-choise stance on abortion: all of these things suggested a kind of centerist, moderate, perhaps even pragmatic, Republican.  And all of that meant he would not fare well with the national, southern-dominated, GOP, which is much more conservative.  But Romney wants to be President, and he wants that so badly he is quite willing to not only disavow his earlier positions but to try to claim that he was never really a moderate to begin with.  Thus his implausible reinvention as a "severe conservative."

And, so, as the Rebuplican primaries unfolded, we were presented, time and again, with the spectacle of Romney trying to find whatever words would work to attract conservative voters.  He went beyond flip-floppping to etch-a-sketching.   It was, and continues to be, obvious that he will say anything, anytime, regardless of what he has said or done in the past, to please whatever audience he happens to meet.

It is, therefore, not at all surprising that he has shape-shifted again during the debates with President Obama.  His performances have been veritable festivals of lies and distortions and prevarications.  In subsequent TV ads he has gone bilingual in his fabrications.

He is the very definition of insincere.  And that's a problem for Confucius.

Analects 1.8, contains a passage (which is very closely paraphrased as a stand alone passage in 9.25) that reads:

...above all else, be loyal and stand by your words.  Never befriend those who are not kindred spirits.  And when you're wrong, don't be afraid to change.

Romney gets all of this wrong.  He is not loyal to his words: he says stuff that he does not mean and he does things that are contrary to his words.  He obviously works very hard to befriend people who do not believe what he believes - or, at least, that is what his courting of conservatives appears to be.  But it's hard to know because of his consistent insincerity.  And, as suggested by his flipping and flopping and flipping on health insurance legislation, he has changed his views and pronouncements when we was right.  What a mess!

For Confucius, matching words and actions is very important.  Indeed, actions speak louder than words.  Idle promises and post hoc rationalizations, in which word and deed are mismatched, are to be avoided. 

The Master said: "The ancients spoke little.  They were too ashamed when their actions fell short of their words." (Analects, 4.22)

Adept Hsia asked about the noble-minded, and the Master said: "Such people act before they speak, then they speak according to their actions." (Analects 2.13).

Again, this is a problem for most politicians.  But Romney, in his denial of his actions as Massachusetts Governor, seems especially shameless in this regard.

Romney, however, probably doesn't care what a Confucian perspective might reveal.  He is, after all, at something of a disadvantage in Confucian terms.  As a life-long, successful, and fairly ruthless businessman, he does not cut a figure that a Confucian would necessarily respect at first encounter:

The Master said: "If profit guides your actions, there will be no end of resentment." (Analects 4.12)

Humane government is not like a business and experience in business has little to do with what is necessary to be a noble-minded political leader.  A Confucian would not vote for him.

Comments

[Pete]

George Washington wouldn't have cut it either.

[melektaus]

It's amusing yet terrifying that so many Americans seem to hold these two conflicting sensibilities almost oblivious to the conflict.

At once they are quick to blame their politicians for the lies, malfeasance, and other moral failings that is their constant mark. They almost never blame themselves.

But they also have pretensions that they live in a democracy. But in a democracy, the responsibility of the government's actions and choices, either through direct vote or representatives, represent the peoples' values and choices.

So either they are a democracy and thus the choices of their government reflect their own and they have no one to blame but themselves or they are NOT representative of the peoples' choices and actions and thus they are not a democracy.

Now I happen to think that the US is not a democracy. Far from it in fact. But I also think that the American people are not wholly blameless for their goverment's actions and choices either. Being non democratic does not exculpate them from blame. That's because even in non democratic countries, the people are often partially blameworthy for supporting, endorsing or obeying their goverment even if the ultimate choices are not theirs but the choices of some small group of elites or a dictator or king.

If the US wants to be a democracy it must change its political system from top to bottom but far more importantly, the American people need to change their own values, attitudes and so forth. All the structural political change in the world won't do jack if the people don't even begin to accept responsibility for their blind allegiance to their government.

As the old saying goes, "If you fool me once, shame on you. If you fool me twice, shame on me." The American people can start by saying "But if you fool me a thousand times, may god damn my soul."

The American people are perpetual dupes. Millions will be duped by the rhetoric of politicians again like they always have been. How can you be a democracy when you can't accept responsibility for that fact?

[Bryan]

Your posts are always thought-provoking (truly). You are, of course, aware that judging Gov. Romney either by Confucian or Mencian standards is a rhetorical exercise as such philosophies have no counterpart in American society. Han Fei-tzu would be more appropriate.

As Mitt Romney served his mission in France, perhaps the Little Corporal's comment serves well: In politics an absurdity is not a handicap.

[Bill Haines]

Bryan, supposing that Confucian or Mencian philosophies have no counterpart in American society, why would that imply that judging Romney by such standards is a mere rhetorical exercise?

[Bryan]

My response is quite late. Obviously, it is my own judgment that neither Confucius nor Mencius bring much enlightenment to Gov. Romney's actions/motivations as a public servant. I make this reckoning in the following ways. One, I cannot separate Romney from his country and his time. Two, American society has no civic counterpart to Confucian social thought because America has been for more than 100 years an urban entity- Jeffersonian agrarianism has a few muffled echoes in traditional Chinese society, but has long ceased to exist (and probably never really existed except in Jefferson's own mind). Third, Confucian philosophy exalts the scholar-bureaucrat; the U.S. does not. Fourth, traditional Chinese culture denigrated the merchant class; American society most adamantly does not. Fifth, I direct you to Kuo Mo-jo's essay "Marx Enters a Confucian Temple," wherein Kuo strains to assimilate Confucian and Marxian ways of thought via their respective utopias of the Great Harmony ("ta-t'ung") and a futurist vision of the proletariat-driven good life. Kuo's essay reminds me ever so much of this interesting post. Gov. Romney (and Karl Marx) does not move in an agrarian society composed of a highly stratified and non-mobile citizenry, a complex bureaucracy, and a hereditary autocracy. Romney and Marx exist as men in modern industrial societies (curiously, there are some parallels in the bourgeois grounding of their respective family backgrounds). Judging them by any other time-dependent criterion is a fascinating but ultimately less than useful line of analysis. I cited Han Fei-tzu and Legalism as more germane because this Warring States Era philosophical master emphasized command and control power, a natural law, and the view that human beings were motivated by the carrot and the stick (not the Golden Rule, except in the sense of "He who owns the gold, rules"). Sometimes Han Fei-tzu is equated in a round-about way with Niccolo Machiavelli; I can see a strong streak of expediency in Gov. Romney's actions in government and business. While Legalism was scorned in imperial China, its legacy was the eclipse of Confucian idealism in the actual practice of government. Threads of Legalism appear in American culture like Puritan proscription, Calvinist predestination, the Protestant Work Ethic, 19th century Social Darwinism, a mixed government/private sector economy, and a legal system with twin poles of codification (Legalism/civil law) and prescription (Confucian moral suasion/natural law). Perhaps similar concepts resonate in the history of Romney's only-in-America religion, the Latter Day Saints Church. America lauds the Self-Made Man rather than the Learned Gentleman ("chun-tzu") of ancient China- and the former label describes Gov. Romney's life trajectory far more appropriately than his actual status as an inheritor would suggest.

And my kind thanks to Prof. Crane for providing a space in which to exercise our thoughts.

[Mijn Verhalen]

Wat een geweldig artikel! Mag ik hier naar toe linken vanaf mijn eigen blogs?