Volume 30, Issue 1, Spring/Summer 2010
Darryl M. Trimiew
Pages 63-78
Political Messiahs or Political Pariahs?
The Problem of Moral Leadership in the Twenty-first Century
POLITICAL MORAL LEADERSHIP IS GENERATED, SUPPORTED, AND BLOCKED by the political morality of the people. Moral communities must accept the clay feet of their leaders but carefully monitor the moral qualities of their leader's public policy. Currently this proper approach has given way to a skewed commitment to superficial personal morality. In earlier times, leaders were held to standards of personal morality and public policy both alike and different from those expected of leaders today. In this essay, I consider those similarities and differences to suggest a new moral index for public leadership.