DR. JACK R. VAN ENS, AUTHOR

CREATIVE GROWTH INC.

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WHAT'S A WINNING POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE?

In the lauded HBO miniseries John Adams, a heated exchange occurred between political adversaries Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. "You have a disconcerting lack of faith in your fellow man," Jefferson asserts. "And you," bellows prickly Adams, "display a disturbing excess of faith in your fellow man."

Jefferson shows his classic Enlightenment inclination to see the best in people. He believes we are basically good with a penchant to act badly. Adams, sounding like a dour Calvinist, harbored strong suspicions about the human spirit's native goodness. He took a more jaundiced view of our interior motivations. We are tilted toward doing what's bad, Adams thought, even though we occasionally strive towards what's good.

Jefferson saw the human spirit soaring. His conviction echoed a Psalmist who exclaimed to his Creator, "You have made Man a little less than God and crown him with glory and honor" ( Psalms 8:5). In contrast, Adams desired to harness the human spirit, lest it fall into bad habits and uncontrolled impulses.

Jefferson released individual energies. Adams rejected this optimism. He aimed to reform personal energies, control them, and direct them in order to transform them into worthy conduct.

With superb confidence in reason guiding humans, Jefferson scorned a strong Constitution that forced choices on it citizens and dictated values for their heirs. Adams supported a strong Constitution, doubting the masses would rule effectively and protect personal liberty. Charlatans might con citizens. Common folk, Adams feared, are susceptible to mob rule. Once a few uneducated rubes get into power, they might act unjustly to fellow citizens.

This keen tension arising from putting too much or not enough faith in human nature sparks current political debates.

John McCain leans toward Adams's lack of confidence in people. He concentrates power in a commander in chief who believes peace comes through military strength.

Newsweek Magazine's commentator Fareed Zakaria (July 28, 2008 edition, pp.24) sizes up McCain from a John Adams perspective. "McCain is a pessimist about the world," explains Zakaria, "seeing it as a dark, dangerous place where, without the constant and vigorous application of American force, evil will triumph."

Presidential rival Obama "sees a world that is in many ways going our way." Obama exudes Jeffersonian optimism springing from human nature tilted towards what's good.

Remarks Zakaria, "Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush's freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people's economic prospects, civil society and-his key word-'dignity.' He rejects Bush's obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people's aspirations are broader and more basic-including food, shelter, jobs."

Nurturing a winning political perspective based on McCain's dim view of human nature has its pitfalls. Those lacking confidence in others are tempted to use force to get their way. They coerce enemies into cooperating with them.

After the Revolutionary War, Adams warned that a torrent of passions were unloosed that might wreck the fledgling Republic. He shuddered as he wrote Mercy Warren in January 1776 about the devastating effects unleashed like a whirlwind by "so much Rascality, so much Venality and Corruption, so much Avarice and Ambition, such a rage for Profit and Commerce among all Ranks and Degrees of Men."

Clutching a dark view of the human spirit makes politicians distrustful, suspicious and dependent on militarism to achieve national goals.

Jefferson's sunnier view of human potential breeds weaknesses, too. Those who endorse it work for compromise and arrange round-table summits with adversaries. They build bridges rather than erect barriers. Jeffersonian advocates open themselves to criticism McCain levels against Obama, that he is an idealist who assumes he can charm U.S. enemies to abide by our national interests.

Jefferson rejected democracy common citizens run. He wasn't so naïve as to believe the best about every voter. He relied on a natural aristocracy-a chosen few who were educated, principled and financially solvent-to govern our nation. The common person, Jefferson assumed, would show enough savvy and virtuous capacity to elect the representatives of this caliber. Jefferson believed the many would vote for the virtuous few in our American Republic.

He sometimes gets giddy over our human potential. Jefferson spoke of an unimpaired conscience. "Man," he rhapsodized, "...was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.... The moral sense or conscience is as much a part of a man as his leg and arm." But what happens when greed, ambition or malice corrupt the conscience? Jefferson's exuberant faith in humanity is susceptible to slipping into naiveté.