False Humility

Virtually every Kerry comment on foreign policy attacks the “arrogance” of the Bush administration, sometimes, as here, adding “hubris and swagger” to the complaint.

Echoing this constant refrain, Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time and currently president of the liberal Aspen Institute, delivered a commencement address at Tufts University in which he compared Bush unfavorably to Benjamin Franklin, telling the graduating students “how our first diplomat succeeded, and how the Bush administration fails, to use humility to the country’s advantage.”

“I do wish we could learn a little from old Dr. Franklin and at least fake a little humility, give the appearance of humility, and listen to our allies,” Isaacson said to loud applause.

The need for humility was one of 12 lessons from Franklin that Isaacson, author of “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life” and former chief executive of CNN, offered the crowd assembled on the quad atop the campus hill.

Someone can’t count, possibly the Boston Globe reporter covering the speech since I assume that Isaacson, as Franklin’s biographer, must know that Franklin, in an often-quoted passage from his famous Autobiography (at the end of Chapter 8 in one reproduction and of Chapter 6 in another), listed 13 virtues he hoped to develop, not 12.

In any event I think Isaacson is right that Franklin on humility is almost eerily relevant today, but wrong in his estimation of who needs to learn the lesson. Consider, first, what Franklin wrote:

My list of virtues contain’d at first but twelve; but a Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was generally thought proud; that my pride show’d itself frequently in conversation; that I was not content with being in the right when discussing any point, but was overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc’d me by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the rest, and I added Humility to my list) giving an extensive meaning to the word.

I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the appearance of it….

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.

Others will of course disagree, but the preponderance of “overbearing and rather insolent” discourse that I see these days comes from the smugness of liberals who have convinced themselves that only knaves or fools could fail to recognize their moral superiority. (A recent example is Robert’s Reich’s new book, Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America. “When the test is reason and common sense, liberals win,” Reich writes. “The only reason the ‘Radcons,’ or radical conservatives, are in control right now is that they’re louder, better organized, and better funded.”)

As I listen to the nearly constant prideful boasting about how successful Kerry and the Democrats would be in bringing humility back to Washington, I can almost hear Dr. Franklin chuckling at their inability to distinguish — and their hope that voters won’t be able to distinguish — the appearance from the reality of that elusive virtue.