There is no connection between sexual mores and job performance. Many of the greatest leaders in history were unbridled lechers. The furore which once occurred over President Clinton’s dalliances would seem astonishing, even laughable, in most countries in most eras. Power is a most potent aphrodisiac and great leaders therefore attract unusual amounts of sexual attention. If they are fallible – and are they not human too? – they are only too likely to succumb to the abnormal temptations.
Clearly President Clinton was particularly susceptible to this sort of thing but that had nothing to do with his leadership qualities and how he did his job as chief executive of the most powerful country in the world. Why on earth should it have done so? The fact that his approval ratings went up after the Lewinsky revelations shows that the American people made a perfectly sensible assessment of the hyped-up row which went on in the media. They simply put President Clinton’s indiscretions into perspective.
I suppose there is in the minds of many an understandable prejudice that wishes to see strength and dignity and heroic example in all that leaders and great men do. But in fact it is a prejudice that we must beware. For it is the dangerous prejudice that confuses the singer with the song and therefore runs the risk of condemning even the most perfect melody if it should happen to issue from imperfect or profane lips,
It is the same misconception that supposes private probity ensures faultless public policy and performance. Be assured, history shows there is no correlation between the two. A blameless family man can issue the most disastrous and cruel edicts.
Let us look at a few cases in history. Take Alexander the Great, legendary conqueror from Ancient Greece, military genius, inspirer of men, mythmaker extraordinary. Well, scholars claim that he was in fact a drunkard of heroic proportions, spending a good deal of the last six years of his short life in his cups, and succumbing in the end to an almighty five-day binge which finally ruined his liver and his heart. A great wino then, but also conqueror of the world.
Or take Marlowe, the famous Elizabethan poet. He was another tosspot and a ruffian too – it is thought he was murdered in a squalid tavern brawl. But his marvellous poetry rings down the ages, amazing and enthralling us.
And even Shakespeare himself, greatest of the great poets and playwrights – as a man he was no paragon. It seems he led a slightly disreputable life, certainly not a saintly one, and we all know the indignity he inflicted on his poor, long-suffering wife in leaving her in his will merely his “second best bed.” Not the most admirable of men, dare one say – but what does that matter as we agonise with Prince Hamlet and suffer with old Lear? Creative genius is excused a litany of sins.
Lord Byron was “mad, bad and dangerous to know” but he was a great poet, a brave fighter for freedom in his time, and, dangerous to know though he may have been, judging from the wonderfully vivid letters he wrote he must also have been a fascinating and marvellously stimulating companion. Again, there is a good deal of evidence that Mozart, perhaps the most perfect maker of music who ever lived, was in his person something of an oaf and a lout. Think, as you listen to his perfect heart-soothing music, of the rather cloddish, probably slightly incoherent, man who composed it. Well, even a cracked bottle can pour the purest wine.
And what about Lloyd George, the great reforming Prime Minister of Britain early in the 20th century? He had a mistress for every day of the week and two for Sundays – quite apart, of course, from a faithful wife, as it were, on the side. But he improved the lives of countless millions in Britain through his reforming legislation.
And what of George W. Bush, the ‘decider’ of some of the most awful decisions made in America’s history? It seems very likely that future scholars will judge him to have been a friendly man espousing impeccable Christian, born-again, family values – and an execrable policy-maker and disastrous world leader whose presidency did not begin to measure up to the needs of a great country.
The list is endless. Much as some of us might prefer it different, I’m afraid that private goodness does not necessarily confer creative gifts or automatically guarantee the ability to rule well. In history there have been prodigious sinners who have governed excellently. That is the way the world is – and what a much duller place it would be if it were not so.
