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Type: Hardcover
Item#: C5196
ISBN#: 0684834499
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He changed the way America thought about welfare. Now, will he change the way our nation thinks about its leaders?
Important for conservatives: Now you can use Marvin Olasky's candidate "early-warning system" as we head toward the year 2008 election
The American Leadership Tradition: Moral Vision From Washington to Clinton
by Marvin Olasky
“A president’s religious views or sexual practices have no relation to his public policy.” Finally, here’s the book that cuts the heart out of that argument. You know that what the president does in private affects his leadership. But can you explain why? Could you defend your position publicly?
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If you’re like most conservatives, you’d like to feel ready to do battle when some smart liberal challenges you, but you worry that you might be vulnerable on some points. Without a firm foundation in the truth, it’s easy to cave in to the pagan mantra that saturates our minds each day. Charles Colson picks up on this point in his Foreword, and explains why Marvin Olasky’s latest book may be his most important to date:
“The temptation is great to buckle under to the hue and cry. After all, the nation is at peace, the economy continues to beam, and the world has gained a new respect for America. So what if what our leaders do in private disgusts or dismays us? What business is it of ours? Isn’t it overall job performance that counts, as President Clinton never tires of reminding us?
“Now Marvin Olasky challenges that notion as he challenged the welfare myth, with a serious work of historical scholarship. He shows, among other things, the many links between private morality and public policy. His research should persuade even the most self-indulgent and permissive among us that it does matter for the common weal and even for the national security whether or not high public officials lie as a matter of course or convenience; whether they are faithful to their wives or prone to sexual adventurism; whether their god is power, money, or self rather than the God of the Bible and our American forebears. Here is indisputable evidence of the role of private morality in civic leadership. Olasky’s book should lay to rest once and for all the view that argues the separation of the two.”
A strong detoxicant for American moral pollution
Two centuries after its founding, America desperately needs to renew its understanding of morality and leadership. And no one understands the problem better than Marvin Olasky:
“Edmund Burke wrote, ‘great men are the landmarks and guideposts of the state.’ And when guideposts misdirect, citizens who follow their leaders begin to wallow.” So, as America sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of immorality, Professor Olasky gives us 13 “landmarks” that demonstrate irrefutably the link between religious beliefs and policy decisions, and the link between lying about adultery and lying about other matters. The 13 American statesmen profiled in these pages:
George Washington * Thomas Jefferson * Andrew Jackson * Henry Clay * Abraham Lincoln * Booker T. Washington * John D. Rockefeller * Grover Cleveland * Theodore Roosevelt * Woodrow Wilson * Franklin Roosevelt * John F. Kennedy * Bill Clinton “and Beyond”
Some of these men stand tall as models of moral leadership, others sink low. Some developed firm ethical standards as they grew older. Others developed looser ones. One (other than Bill Clinton) had virtually no standards at all on a personal level. Taken together, these men’s lives prove that private morals affect public politics, that character in the craft of statesmanship is paramount. Olasky fortifies you with the winning arguments. Indeed ...
Everything that you need for a consistent, well-rounded conservative vision on statesmanship is spelled out here — by historical example — clearly, simply, readably. Does your candidate pass muster?
How can you be sure that the man you vote for in the next election will be a president of integrity? Olasky offers hope: “Physical or spiritual adultery are warning signs of deep difficulties that emerge in many different ways: Specifics are unforeseeable, but dangerous patterns of behavior are not.” History, as recorded in The American Leadership Tradition, shows that there are no guarantees, but it does provide signals telling us what to avoid. If we are not to cement cynicism in place for a generation, it is imperative that Clinton’s successor be a man of integrity. Now you can arm yourself with Professor Olasky’s “early-warning system” and correctly discern your candidate’s moral barometer as we head toward that crucial year 2000 presidential election.
Known to most of us as the editor of the Christian newsweekly World and the author of The Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky is also professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, a senior fellow at The Progress and Freedom Foundation, and the author of 8 other scholarly work
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