On Ordinary Heroes and American Democracy

Gerald M. Pomper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317255116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

True American heroes need not have superhuman abilities nor do they need to act alone. Heroism in a democracy is different from the heroism of myths and legends, writes Gerald Pomper in this original contribution to the literature of U.S. politics. Through the remarkable stories of eight diverse Americans who acted as heroes by "just doing their jobs" during national crises, he offers a provocative definition of heroism and fresh reasons to respect U.S. institutions and the people who work within them. This new paperback edition includes photographs, an introductory chapter on American heroism after 9/11, a survey of the meanings of heroism in U.S. popular culture, and an original concluding theory of "ordinary" heroism.

CHAPTER ONE

WE CALL THEM HEROES

Recall these heroes.

In the ancient world, the demigod Achilles, angered by the loss of his mistress, quits the Greek fight against the Trojans. Relenting only when his dearest friend is slain, the warrior vengefully defeats the enemy leader, Hector, in single combat. As Achilles too prepares to die, he brings the Greeks to the eve of their epic victory and is eternally remembered as the hero of the Trojan War.

Three millennia after Troy falls, a new war begins in a new world.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, international terrorists hijack four U.S. airliners loaded with fuel for cross-continental trips. They crash two of the aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and a third into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. When the hijackers meet resistance from the passengers on the fourth plane, apparently headed for the Capitol or the White House, it crashes in rural Pennsylvania. All passengers and crew members die.

Explosions, fires at temperatures of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the collapse of the targeted buildings follow. In New York, within two hours both the World Trade Center towers have fallen, each of their 110 stories caving one after another onto the floors beneath. Five nearby buildings are also wrecked by nightfall. In Washington, one side of the Pentagon, the world’s largest office building, is destroyed. All told, some three thousand people die, most of them incinerated into unrecoverable ashes in monumental buildings transformed into twenty-first-century crematoria. The toll is the greatest one-day loss of lives through violence on American soil since the bloody Civil War battle of Antietam.

These horrific events prompted national recognition of a multitude of heroes.¹ Individuals displayed altruism and bravery in many ways. Doomed airline passengers and office workers sent phone and e-mail messages conveying their love to their families. Tens of thousands evacuated skyscrapers without panic or selfishness. One man perished at the World Trade Center because he would not leave his paraplegic co-worker to die alone. Another group of office workers carried a disabled clerk and her wheelchair down sixty flights of stairs. Executives stayed behind to direct their employees to safety and perished in the engulfing fires.

Volunteers rushed to the disaster areas, digging into the rubble to seek victims even as tons of falling debris threatened their lives. Others offered their homes to displaced local residents, prepared meals for rescue workers, and even played music to hearten them. Across the nation, and throughout the world, millions of people prayed, sent financial contributions that eventually totaled over $1.5 billion, and donated more blood than could be stored in local hospitals.

Among the passengers on board the doomed aircraft, only those on United flight #93 learned, through cell-phone conversations, of the fate that awaited them. Three of these passengers exhibited particularly audacious courage: “If they’re going to run this into the ground we’re going to have to do something. We’re going to rush the hijackers,” one of them told his family.² In the ensuing struggle the passengers succeeded in diverting the plane, thereby assuring their own deaths but preventing a fourth deliberate crash.

At the crash sites, bravery combined with duty. Policemen and medical professionals attempted to do their accustomed governmental work—providing protection and health care for citizens. Teachers calmly led their pupils to safety amid the din, the terror, and the air thick with ash. As thousands of brokers and clerks fled down hundreds of stairs and survived, firefighters sped past them into the inferno, in an attempt to control the conflagrations and lead survivors to safety. As one journalist observed, “They walked into buildings where they did not work, and restaurants where they could not afford to eat, to save people who might have looked down on them.”³ In New York, 343 firefighters perished, most of their bodies unrecovered and thus never given a formal burial.

Another government worker, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, served as both an effective administrator and a gentle priest during the crisis. Through public statements and personal contacts, the mayor sent messages of consolation, hope, and endurance—in one instance replacing a lost firefighter as best man for a friend’s wedding. Although his own life was endangered in the collapse of the city’s emergency headquarters, Giuliani organized a comprehensive response that included changing subway and highway routes to maintain a smooth flow of transportation on the dense island of Manhattan, establishing the means to identify and bury thousands of victims, seeking jobs and financial aid for those now without offices, employers, and customers, and winning financial and legislative support from the state and the federal governments.

Prior to September 11, few might have thought the mayor equal to the task. Although he had succeeded in improving life in New York City, particularly by bringing about a dramatic decrease in crime, he had seemed flawed in many ways—overly ambitious, puritanical, and unpleasant to his opponents. Yet in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, even his fiercest critics would praise him ardently. As one commentator summed it up: “Anyone, everyone has a powerful need for reassurance right now, and a desire for protection—protection from despair and nihilism, from terrorized paralysis, from hate and dark fantasies of doomed revenge. Giuliani has provided that reassurance and protection, and the nation is grateful to him.”⁴

Who Are the Heroes?

We learn about heroism from ancient tales, such as that of Achilles, and from brutal modern reality. Both can in particular teach us much about democratic politics, the subject of this book. The contrast between the valor of Achilles and that evident on September 11 illuminates the difference between the fabled exploits of “great men” and the quieter courage of model democrats. Within the structures of a democracy, heroism is based on institutions, not personalities. Our modern exemplars underline the central argument of this book: democratic heroes are ordinary men and women who ably perform their institutional responsibilities in times of crisis.

Achilles exemplifies an altogether different kind of hero. He is the conventional archetype of the hero, an extraordinary individual—the larger-than-life personage for whom the Greeks invented the very word we know as “hero.” Just as Agamemnon’s soldiers looked to Achilles to defeat their enemy, so we often look for champions to protect us and preserve our society. Typically, our storybooks depict heroes as dramatic figures, while biographies of our traditional heroes generally focus on the unique personal characteristics of their subjects. In contemporary politics as well, we search for the charismatic leader who will easily solve the complex problems of modern life.

This conventional view, however, has serious—and worrisome—implications for democratic politics. Demigods—people like Achilles—are few and far between. Relying on such heroes makes human welfare contingent on the exceptional intervention, often unreliable and always arbitrary, of these unique individuals. The successful resolution of crises then depends essentially on luck—on the chance that extraordinary people will be found to meet a crisis or that some person will undergo an ennobling transformation at the critical moment.

These implications are particularly serious in a democracy. The basic premise of self-government is that the people themselves have enough character and collective wisdom to choose appropriate leaders and resolve their common problems. But this faith hardly fits a populace that depends on heroes such as Achilles. Rather, reliance on such heroes too easily leads to disdain for the staple of democracy, the ordinary citizen. Bertolt Brecht draws this basic distinction in his play Galileo. One of Brecht’s characters voices the widespread desire for “noble” exemplars: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes.” But another character responds skeptically: “Unhappy the land that needs a hero.”⁵ Human success will require common effort, not extraordinary intervention.

Democracy cannot wait for demigods; it requires “ordinary heroes,” apparently undistinguished people, working through the multiple institutions of government, who can do what is necessary in extraordinary moments. These people become heroes not by luck or as the result of miraculous personal metamorphoses. They become heroes by fulfilling their responsibilities as they always have but in a situation in which their qualities are particularly needed. Heroism is potentially widespread but usually latent, unseen until it is evoked by external events.

James Madison recognized the limits of heroism when he argued in The Federalist that government must be designed for use by ordinary people: “It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”⁶ Madison argued that a successful government cannot depend on great men—or, we would add, great women. Instead, for Madison, a democratic republic requires appropriate institutional arrangements that will curb the evils of factions, promote the selection of wise officials, and transform the conflict of personal ambitions into the common good. Appropriate institutions are needed because, in Alexander Hamilton’s concurring words, “the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.”⁷

Madison and Hamilton emphasize institutions, not individuals. But the traditional hero is unconfined by institutions. Indeed, he may be dangerous because he refuses such constraints, as the Greeks themselves recognized in the practice of ostracism, in which persons who had stepped too far out of line were temporarily exiled. Achilles subverts the discipline of the Greek armies, prizing his private anger over the success of his comrades. When he returns to battle, he does so only to settle an individual grudge, not as a leader of Agamemnon’s forces. Even as he glorifies Achilles’ name, Homer warns of his rage, “murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, feasts for the dogs and birds.”⁸

The brave men and women who responded to the attacks of September 11 are different; they are people of human dimensions. But their bravery, in many instances, is also notably distinct from the heroes of governmental institutions whom we will consider in this book. Democracy does not depend on any modern Achilles, and it does not demand that men and women show exceptional bravery. What democracy does require is able representatives, administrators, and activists.

Individual actions after September 11, courageous as they were, could not meet the needs of America in this crisis.⁹ Rescue, renewal, and ultimate retaliation required collective action on the part of government. The volunteers were soon sent home, despite their earnest commitment, because they were complicating rescue efforts. Charitable contributions, despite their outstanding generosity, proved insufficient; government had to provide the enormous financial resources needed—$55 billion in the first congressional appropriation—to finance military responses, to clear the rubble and rebuild New York, and to maintain the national air transportation system and safeguard airports. The public understood this necessity. After decades in which the citizenry regarded the government with cynicism and even scorn, opinion polls showed a vast increase in confidence in all national institutions, a sentiment still in evidence even a year after the attacks.¹⁰

The defiant passengers on United flight #93 certainly merit praise and are properly seen as exemplars of personal courage.¹¹ A secure political life, however, cannot depend either on such individuals or on the improbable chance that they will be available when danger comes along. Businessmen or vacationing families cannot be expected to assure security in the skies. Safe air travel requires governmental action, such as regulations concerning security screening, the provision of air marshals, the identification and control of possible terrorists, or more effective law enforcement on the ground. In keeping with the thesis of this book, public safety and well-being require democratic heroes, people in the government who competently carry out their jobs even at moments of crisis.

Such democratic heroes did exist in the crisis of September 11. They are exemplified by the professional rescuers at the scene. Their bravery was not only an immediate response but also their daily occupation. Mayor Giuliani led these efforts, combining competence and compassion. Soon after, engineers employed in an obscure New York City bureaucracy, the Department of Design and Construction, took on the massive task of recovery and cleared millions of tons of debris from the site rapidly and without a single fatal injury, coming in under budget as well.¹² These are the persons with whom democracy is comfortable, ordinary people who do heroic deeds at a time of crisis simply by carrying out their institutional responsibilities in an exemplary manner. Although often vastly different in social class and background, ordinary heroes use virtually the same words to explain their performance. “I was just doing my job,” they usually say, emphasizing their everyday responsibilities rather than their personal qualities. Mayor Giuliani, not known for his modesty, expressed this sentiment as he directed the response to the World Trade Center attack: “These are extremely strong people. And I just reflect them…. I just happen to be here. This is my job and I’ll do it.”¹³

Their “job”—whether a self-designated mission or a paid position—plunges these persons in critical times into situations in which they act heroically, but not self-consciously, out of custom, habit, and the regular practice of their vocations. At the World Trade Center, firefighters died “doing what they were trained to do. They were going to a job, and that was it.”¹⁴ This fundamental sense of duty is also illustrated by accountants who uncover corruption and by teachers who inspire their halting students to read. Abroad, countless children were saved from the Nazi Holocaust by nurses and social workers who felt they “had no choice” but to honor the life-affirming tenets of their professions.

It is extremely important to note that heroism, as we use the term in this book, exists only among individuals who are profoundly committed to humanitarian values. The heroism of people who are just doing their jobs is wholly different from petty compliance, or simply “obeying orders,” apologies that may be used to excuse passivity or even to condone evil. Such perversion of true duty is exemplified by subordinates who quietly acquiesce in their superiors’ brutality or corruption and then claim exoneration on the grounds that they were simply following orders—for “just doing my job.” That wicked excuse was used most catastrophically by the Nazi bureaucrats who submissively carried out their murderous assignments. To do a job rightly does not mean following its mechanical routines but meeting its responsibilities. A truly devoted worker will perform his or her duties only to the extent these duties don’t conflict with basic ethical principles. There must be more than obedience to superiors; there must also be a commitment to fundamental morality and the higher values of the institution’s work, such as honesty, legality, and the protection and well-being of those in their care.

Heroes and Institutions

This book is about eight ordinary heroes in American politics. They are illustrative, rather than unique, figures; readers will surely think of other equally appropriate persons. At a particular time of crisis, these men and women did what they always did, putting the values of their institutions into practice in an exemplary fashion. In the world of politics, they are the equivalent of Pulitzer Prize winners in journalism, deserving honor for doing their ordinary work extraordinarily well. The stories of these eight individuals are inspiring in themselves. We will see them display courage, persistence, and personal virtue (and, yes, occasional bad judgment), and we may take heart from their experience. As Barbara Tuchman points out, “Plutarch, the father of biography, used it for moral examples: to display the rewar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Heroism in the New Century
• 1 We Call Them Heroes
• 2 Models of American Heroism
• 3 Peter Rodino: A Hero of the House
• 4 Arthur Watkins: A Hero of the Senate
• 5 Harry Truman: A Hero as President
• 6 Wayne Justice: A Hero of the Judiciary
• 7 Frances Kelsey: A Hero of Bureaucracy
• 8 Thurlow Weed: A Hero in Party Politics
• 9 Ida Tarbell: A Hero of the Press
• 10 John Lewis: A Hero of Social Movements
• 11 Ordinary Heroes and American Democracy
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author