Jeffrey A Becker - Ambition in America: Political Power and the Collapse of Citizenship

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Ambition in America

Ambition

in

America

Political Power
and the
Collapse of Citizenship

JEFFREY A. BECKER

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Copyright 2014 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8131-4504-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8131-4506-8 (pdf)
ISBN 978-0-8131-4505-1 (epub)

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of American University Presses

For
Virginia Draper,
John Schaar,
and Wilson Carey McWilliams

All teachers, all friends

Contents

Preface

The Triumph of Ambition and the Collapse of Citizenship?

American democracy faces an enduring challenge to encourage, harness, and direct the ambitions citizens have to wield political power. Most Americans are familiar with the structure of representation and separation of powers James Madison put into the Constitution to restrain and channel self-interested ambition. Yet little attention has been given to ways of encouraging political ambitions. Though Americans encourage the ambitions of scientists, artists, athletes, inventors, entrepreneurs, soldiers, engineers, and others, political ambitions stand alone. We encourage private forms of ambition yet ignore public forms of ambition, leaving the republic to fend for itself, without training or encouragements for politics. While we promote ambitions for private achievement, aspiration, and success in private venues, we leave the training of citizenship and public ambitions to itself. The ambition to be a private success is lauded; public success is more complicated. Gratifying our material and sensual desires (privately) through ambition is accepted, but not publicly.

And as Joseph Schlesinger warned in 1966: A political system unable to kindle ambitions for office is as much in danger of breaking down as one unable to restrain ambitions. More important, the way Americans talk about democratic politics offers little room for developing and educating healthy political ambitions of ordinary citizens or their elected officials for public life. And there are few if any explorations of the nature of ambition; the relationships that define, shape, and sustain ambition; the ways it can be expressed; or the ways ambitions might threaten or strengthen democratic politics.

This study is such an exploration. It examines how American political institutions and forms of association have sought to inspire, guide, and constrain citizens ambitions to rule. It explores how institutions and associations, social movements, and elected officials have offered competing incentives and norms for citizens seeking political power. And to identify those understandings that threaten self-government and those that can strengthen democratic politics, it examines different understandings about the value and role of ambition in politics.

My approach to ambition begins at the conceptual level. From its earliest usage in the English language, ambition has been associated with people soliciting others for support, status, and approval. See the Oxford English Dictionary: 1. going round, 2. going round to canvass for votes, 3. eager desire of honour, etc. The root of the word is from the Latin: ambit: 1. A circuit, compass, or circumference, 2. esp. A space surrounding a house, castle, town, etc. Keeping with this most basic definition, in this study ambition refers to a persons desire for public support, approval, and power. An ambitious person moves beyond home, outside the self, into a broader field of social interaction to solicit support. In this respect, a person who wants to satisfy his or her ambitions must willingly engage the social and collective standards of other people because communities of people determine what counts as fame, what merits rank, and who legitimately exercises political power.

One of this books central purposes is to move beyond examining the ambitions of those who want political power to look at the ambitions Americans have (and once had) for themselves in public life and those they have (and once had) for their communities. The story of ambition in America is many stories taking place across time, in different locales, and in response to particular events and historical circumstances. The introduction describes the challenge ambition offers to democracies and looks briefly at contemporary attitudes and theorists, to identify the need for a more comprehensive study of ambition. shows that political parties can still serve as a mechanism for keeping ambitious people accountable to democratic norms.

This study concludes that ambition is a necessary feature of democratic politics; public life must accommodate a range of ambitions; an inequality in citizens ambitions to rule, though unavoidable, is compatible with democracy; democratic politics requires all citizens to be educated about the need to encourage and sustain certain kinds of political ambitions; and, most important, citizens must be taught to defend institutional practicesthough they may be imperfectthat nurture and allow the public to recognize people of ambition. When existing political institutions and associations are unable to satisfy the ambitions of citizens in American public life, ambitious people become frustrated and either withdraw or seek political power in ways that undermine principles of equality and due process.

I propose that an increased understanding of the nature of ambition in American politics will help citizens meet the challenges now faced, when political institutions and economic organizations increasingly appear too powerful or complex for citizens to comprehend, much less control.

Introduction

The Paradox of Power in America

Towering genius disdains a beaten path.... It thirsts and burns for distinction.... Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us?... Distinction will be his paramount object; and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.

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