A life of ambition

Is political drive good or bad?

Someone is treating us to television ads portraying Congressman Tom Cotton as ambitious. It got me wondering about the kind of people who would pay for such ads.

It also got me to thinking about ambition. Is it a good or bad thing that every member of Congress has ambition?

“Ambition lies at the heart of politics.” Joseph Schlesinger began his 1966 classic, Ambition and Politics, with that conclusion. He was right, but most members of Congress shirk the label and promote the fiction that their motives are 100 percent pure, unsoiled; that they run solely to serve the public good.

—————— What is wrong with being ambitious? The answer is tricky because there are many shades of ambition. The task simplifies by identifying the polar extremes: selfless ambition and selfish ambition.

We admire selfless ambition. We like people who have a passion about something that has nothing to do with self. The Apostle Paul is a good example. He was selfless, preaching the gospel to those who had not heard it. We teach our children that it is good to be aggressive, determined, energetic, enterprising and resourceful so long as their ambition is for the greater good.

We despise selfish ambition. Shakespeare’s Macbeth let ambition get the best of him; goaded by Lady Macbeth, he murdered to become king. Moreover, the Bible teaches us that selfish ambition leads to disorder and every evil thing. Thus, we teach our kids that it is bad to be pushy, overzealous and mean-spirited because such ambition is selfish.

Most ambitious people fit somewhere between the polar extremes. The challenge is to err on the side of selflessness.

After the 1978 election, I went to Washington as the newly elected congressman from the Second Congressional District of Arkansas. Upon arrival, I met other new members—Democrats and Republicans. It was quite a class: Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., became speaker of the House; Dick Cheney, R-Wyo., became vice president; Tom Daschle, D-S.D., became majority leader of the Senate; Ron Paul, R-Texas, became the leader of a new libertarian movement and a candidate for president; Bill Nelson, D-Fla., became a senator, and so did Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. Phil Gramm, a Texas Democrat, switched to Republican and became a senator. Others became governors and cabinet members.

We were ambitious, every one of us. Our ambitions could have led us in other directions—business, the arts, theater, sports—but we won election to high public office.

Is Bill Clinton ambitious? Hillary? Was Reagan? JFK? Yes, of course. They would not have run if they had lacked ambition.

So, how do we know if their ambitions to serve were good or bad? Defining good or bad ambition is a little like defining pornography—it is hard to do, but you know it when you see it.

The television ads tell us that Congressman Tom Cotton cares only about himself. His enemies are spending big money to say he is too ambitious, too selfish, and badly motivated.

How do they know his heart? What does it say of them that they are willing to make such accusations when he has been in office less than eight months? Is their ambition to destroy him closer to St. Paul or to Macbeth?

Ask yourself this: Would you want your child to be ambitious, work hard and go to Harvard? Would you want your child to be ambitious enough to go on to Harvard Law School? Would you be proud if your ambitious child graduated from Harvard with honors? Are not these good ambitions?

Would you be proud if your ambitious child gave up a high-paying job to go off to war in Iraq and Afghanistan where he served with distinction and received a Bronze Star? Was that selfless ambition or selfish ambition?

If your child worked for a year and a half to win a hotly contested election to Congress, would you call that selfish or selfless, and would it matter? What if your ambitious child, like Bill Clinton, attracted favorable attention and became a rising star on the national stage?

Would that be a good thing for you, for Arkansas?

Election season has started early this year. We always hope the candidates will stick to the issues and not question the motives of their opponent, but rascally commentators and operatives—often envious, fearful or hateful—inevitably sink to the lowest level.

Tom Cotton started as a farm boy in Dardanelle. He made it to where he is today thanks to hard work and ambition. His life story is a good one.

It does not get much lower than to mischaracterize the ambition of a man who has achieved so much and put his life on the line for his country.

Makes you wonder about the ambitions of his enemies, does it not? Are they being selfless or selfish?