Be wary in your dealings with the ruling powers, for they only befriend someone when it suits their needs. They appear to be friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a person in his hour of need.
– Pirkei Avot, 3:3
If you can’t eat their food, drink their liquor, screw their women, take their money, and then vote against them, you’ve got no business being up here.
– Jesse Unruh, California Assembly Speaker (1961-69)
It’s not hard to envision the rabbis who redacted Pirkei Avot as learning a good deal from this week’s Haftarah. On his deathbed, King David imparts his final words of wisdom to his son Solomon, but in the middle of what we might expect to be an ethical will, we get this nugget:
You must also deal with Shimei son of Gera, the Benjaminite from Bahurim. He insulted me outrageously when I was on my way to Mahanaim; but he came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by the Lord: ‘I will not put you to the sword.’ So do not let him go unpunished; for you are a wise man and you will know how to deal with him and send his gray hair down to Sheol in blood.
David could be a pretty brutal guy, so this is in character. “Okay, I promised that person that I wouldn’t harm him, but I didn’t say anything about you harming him.” It’s absurd. Little wonder that the great classical commentator Isaac Abravanel was not only appalled at David’s mendacity, but soundly rejected the dying king’s attempt at avoiding moral responsibility.
But was David wrong?
We first meet Shimei in the Second Book of Samuel, when David’s reign is undergoing a near-death experience at the hands of his rebellious son Absalom. Shimei serves as something of a propagandist for the rebels; he follows David’s army, belittling it and telling anyone who will listen of the monarch’s own treachery and mendacity against Saul (think “> Mr. Dooley, politics ain’t beanbag. Ruthlessness and mendacity is typically a part of it. We cannot flee from it. Our task is to attempt to minimize it and turn it to the best ends possible.
Gunther Plaut warns us not to judge King David as we would a politician in a democracy, and that is true as far as it goes. We should obviously be grateful that in our country, murder of one’s political opponents is unheard of. But that is because, among other things, we have politicians who are as canny, and clever, and cold-blooded as David was.
Building nations, as King David sought to do, requires violence. No nation was founded or consolidated without it. America’s own bloody Civil War belies our conceit of exceptionalism.
But how do we maintain stability once it emerges? The framers imagined a set of virtuous politicians who would selflessly place the national good over factional interest. Not quite. Instead, stability requires politicians to be masters of their own craft: politics. That means exercising some pretty dark arts.
Successful politicians develop a strange skill-set, and dissembling comprises a big part of it. They must generate support through promises, but must also make compromises with other political actors, who have worked at generating support on their own. They must promise to protect some constituencies – and then break those promises if facts or circumstances change. The best politicians often make it seem as if they will stand by someone, only to break at the last minute to broker a favorable deal.
No political actor can get anything done otherwise. Mark Twain’s quip that “there is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress” is funny, but false. Politicians often cut corners with the truth, not because they lack principles, but precisely because they have them. They want to achieve things, and so they must feign, counterfeit, and delude. Leadership requires misleading.
It is not just a matter of deception. Politicians must also engage in their share of intimidation, threats, and destruction. Machiavelli’s famous argument that a prince must be a lion to intimidate wolves and a fox to avoid snares is true in a monarchy or a democracy.
The classic example of these political requirements is Lyndon Johnson. LBJ was abusive, cruel, manipulative, and deceitful – and accomplished more for the economically and racially oppressed than any other President in US history. Perhaps his horrific character powerfully contributed to his political success. Other politicians, however, use his techniques of intimidation, flattery, and dissimulation (to a lesser degree, of course) because that is what politics requires, be it ancient or modern. Much of politics is good people doing not-so-good things for good ends.
LBJ also made the system work. When he arrived in the United States Senate, the upper house was a laughing stock of dysfunction; as Majority Leader, Johnson made it the effective engine of American governance. As noted above, David took a collection of warring tribes and forged them into a unified kingdom. Institutions do not run themselves: they require good leadership to work. Duplicity and occasional brutality are the grease that make the wheels of government run.
Thus, David arranging for the murder of a political rival is not a relic from a bygone age, for democracy is not invulnerable. The 20th century saw dozens of democratic collapses; political breakdown still occurs all-too-frequently in the Global South; we can hardly take for granted our country’s own stability and freedom. The public generally gives itself all the credit for maintaining its own freedom. But just as much should go to the politicians that it elects. Those politicians dissemble, betray, mislead, and undermine when they must; little wonder that the populace holds them in contempt. But their actions, like King David’s, are necessary to maintain the stability and health of their countries.
All this is not to celebrate political nihilism or power for its own sake. The greatest politicians aim at the good and the just, and in the case of David, the holy. Rather, in aiming high, political leaders must often take the low road. The ends do not justify the means; but as Haftarat Vayehi reminds us, our attempts to achieve the sacred will always need substantial support from the profane.