Feared vs. Loved: False Dichotomy

A few weeks ago, The Onion ran an article describing the current lack of serious potential 2016 GOP contestants. Because of the lack of viable Republican candidates, the GOP has been forced to vet Senator Rand Paul out of sheer boredom.  Chairman Reince Priebus weighing in on the issue, “It’s still pretty early, and honestly we don’t have much else to do right now, so we figured we might as well assess Rand Paul’s background and political profile until someone who actually has a decent chance of getting elected comes along.”  While, obviously satirical, it seems that The Onion has a point.  Republicans are bored with the current prospect of potential 2016 candidates and they should be.

It also seems that this boredom and lack of garnering public support has pushed Republicans to an attempt at impeaching the president.  Although the second term of President Obama has been fairly bleak with numerous mistakes and missteps, I think his impeachment would be imprudent.  Robert Tracinski, contributor to the Federalist, points out that the GOP is now trying to do what it couldn’t accomplish at the polls. This attempt is nothing short of a circumvention of federalism and should be avoided at all costs.

Should Republicans, Democrats, and moderates be upset with the blatant mistakes of this second term? Of course, we should be upset with everything ranging from the IRS scandal to destroying our relationship with Germany.  But instead of attempting to circumvent federalism, Republicans should start looking at how to improve their own party and finding a strong executive for 2016.  Looking forward, the RNC and DNC should reconsider the question of whether it is better to be feared or loved.  Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince, sets up a false dichotomy between love and fear, “It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”  In pop culture we have seen this displayed in two well known political dramas, The West Wing and House of Cards.  Brian Miller touches on this dichotomy through the portrayals of Frank Underwood and Josiah Bartlett.

When thinking about 2016 and the current foreign policy crises that we are in, we should not settle for either the unabashed cruelty of Underwood or the fatherly paternalism of Bartlett in our nominees.  Our current president sought the love of the people at the expense of being strong in foreign policy.  In reality, the nation is more divided and we are weak in the eyes of foreign leaders. The nation needs a strong president who can be both loved in the eyes of the people but feared by our enemies.