One of the weaknesses of our Western democracies is the disdain the majority has for politicians. I remember the words of David Letterman, famous on American television, when he said in 2000, the year in which George W. Bush and Al Gore faced each other in the presidential elections: "I think I speak for everyone when I say that it is a pity that only one of these two characters will lose".
Twenty-three years later, with Biden and Trump as the options, he might say the same, but with more conviction. And apply it to more countries, such as Argentina, which has to decide today between Sergio Massa and Javier Milei. Here in Spain we don't have it so bad, at first glance, since not everyone despises Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. But, without having been so clear when we voted in July, it turns out that we ended up choosing between a government in which either Santiago Abascal or Carles Puigdemont would have the decisive say in determining the direction of the country.
But let's see, there are good people in politics. They may not last long, but they do exist. I'll tell you a real-life fable centered around Rory Stewart, possibly the most brilliant public figure in the old, venerable and decaying British democracy. I know you don't know him, but listen to me. Don't go away. Stewart is a unique guy.
He is 50 years old. He is a martial arts expert who studied medieval history, politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford. After leaving university he became a soldier, then joined the British diplomatic service and operated in Indonesia and Montenegro. He stopped serving His Majesty at the age of 30 and embarked, alone, on a walk that lasted 21 months, in which he traveled more than two thousand kilometers from Iran to Nepal, passing through Afghanistan , Pakistan and India. Stewart speaks Dari, one of the two official Afghan languages, and nine other languages, including Nepali, Urdu, Serbo-Croatian and (easy) French.
He was elected Member of Parliament for the Conservative Party in 2010 and held several ministerial positions, including foreign cooperation. But he opposed Brexit, came to detest its leader, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and in 2019 left the party and Parliament and went to teach at Yale University. Now he writes books, has a successful podcast and debates between his disgust with politics and his respect for democracy.
What is clear to him is the following, expressed in a conference a few months ago: "I find that the job of being a politician is very, very bad for me. It's bad for my mind, it's bad for my body, it's bad for my soul. I ended up being a vain, slightly immoral person who stopped listening. Politicians don't listen... I became anxious. I stopped loving myself. I hated the fact that, on the one hand, I criticized the leaders of my party, but on the other hand, I wooed them, treated them with extreme courtesy, driven by the hope of getting a good position, and, finally, I ended up hating myself."
These words are a poem, a requiem for a well-meaning politician. The politicians who see themselves portrayed in it should follow Stewart's example and stop it now. I mean the ones who are so moral and so sensitive that they end up hating themselves. Politics is not a country for the pure, as Milei's illuminati has come to understand during the electoral campaign, as he will irrefutably discover in the event that he reaches the presidency. Ideological fanatics like him can work in dictatorships, but in a democracy, where you have to negotiate with rivals and make concessions, complicated. If he wins today, he will experience disappointments and learn that in order to move forward, he will have to get his hands dirty, like his Peronist rival, Massa, who got them dirty long ago and will never suffer the crises of conscience that people like Stewart.
Stewart says today that he doesn't know if it's really useful for politics. Well, I'll tell you: no, it's no use. He entered politics, like so many, to improve the world, to strengthen a democratic system that he values more than the average citizen, because he has known first-hand the alternatives represented by various theocracies, totalitarianisms and tyrannies. The paradox with which Stewart could not reconcile himself is that in order to advance as a politician in a democracy you have to step back sometimes, you have to sacrifice at least in part what were once your principles, you have to be open to the 'accusation that you are a hypocrite, or a liar, or a cynic, or all three at the same time. If not, you will not reach the goal, as the president of the Spanish Government teaches us. In the style of his namesake Saint Peter, Sánchez swore time and time again that he would not make a pact with the devil, in this case with the Catalan independence activists, but in the end he did and this week he achieved his goal. Keep ordering.
How does he justify it to himself? How does he end up not hating himself? In a way that an unpolluted angel like Stewart could not. Acting on the premise that what is better is the enemy of what is good. That any damage to his reputation is worth it, in order to avoid the greater evil of a regime that would include the extreme right represented in Vox, which he believes would have returned, among other things, to inflame Catalonia and bring it closer, not less, to the dream of secession.
What if vanity also plays a role? Ha! Of course. Here's another thing that Stewart and bona fide naive like him don't have. Without the engine of personal ambition, don't get involved in politics. Feijóo would have betrayed his mother, or almost, if he got the votes to form a government. Nelson Mandela himself, who for me is the quintessential example of a great politician, did what Stewart found so distasteful, ingratiated himself with people he didn't agree with - like Thatcher, Gaddafi, Castro , racist white generals – to come to power and establish a real democracy in their country.
Yes, even the best must be stained. So let's be more lenient with our politicians. We do not despise them so much. The price of democracy is to accept concessions to ideological and moral baseness. Politics is a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
