Gary Hart is not a politician; he just played one in the United States Senate. He is, he wants us to know, a patriot — an enlightened leader of his people who loves the common good (or, as he likes to put it, the “national interest”) more than his own interest and who wishes, above all, to effect a restoration of America’s greatness in the face of a tidal wave of barbarism. His definition of “the patriot” can be gleaned from his new book of the same name, in which he lays out a political philosophy meant to guide a new generation of American “leaders” through a most confusing and unpleasant age.
The Patriot (Free Press, 187 pages, $ 21.00) is a hilarious piece of work — not that he meant it that way. Hart presents the thing as a modern update of Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince; indeed, the publisher’s blurb announces confidently, “If Machiavelli had been an idealist, this is the book he would have written.” If Machiavelli had been an idealist. . . . It is diffcult to imagine a statement more antithetical to the spirit of Machiavelli, history’s most influential intellectual opponent of idealism in any form. If Machiavelli had been an idealist, he would not have been Machiavelli, wallower in harsh realities.
