The Politician v. The Statesman

"We need to revive, if only for the purposes of evaluation, the traditional distinction between the politician and the statesman. The statesman differs from the ordinary politician, in that he is able to envisage and inspire support for policies that are in the ultimate, best interest of the most people, and, however rare he may be, we think of him rightly as the politician par excellence. To the extent that the ordinary politician's vision is limited to that which is immediately expedient, to the extent that he is motivated by narrow, sectional, group, or personal interests, we think of him as a failure; and the more narrow his vision and selfish his aim, the greater the failure. The statesman is concerned with inspiring right action, and the test of his statesmanship is his ability to lead public opinion rather than slavishly to follow it. To lead public opinion does not mean to coerce or to beguile the individuals who make up the public but to persuade them by means of argument." John Hallowell, The Moral Foundations of Democracy