gre writing issue sample writing 107
- To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
Many would say that morality is the inseparable quality of any effective public official. In some sense, it is true that honesty is one of important weapons a successful leader should have and that the effectiveness of a public official can be measured by the degree of morality the official exhibits. From my perspective, however, excessive emphasis on moral and ethical standards may mislead our attention; instead of focusing on more significant visions and contributions a leader provides, we might be enfettered with the past matter or the quite personal issues of the public official.
Of course, few would disagree that a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards in order to be an effective leader. Considering the fact that one of the important duties of the public official is to persuade general citizens to follow rules and lead more responsible social lives, honesty of the persuaders is never trivial. Eroding their own ethical grounds by being involved in egregious scandals including bribery, history shows, many authoritarian leaders over the world have lost trusts from their people and finally relied on coercions rather than sincere persuasions. Without basic morality, hypocrisy produces another fraud and to conceal the dishonesty, frauds demand ignorance among citizens and coercive suppression on honesty’s just appeals.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that honesty is the single most important virtue an effective leader should always worship. Considering the wide variety of duties for which a modern political leader should take responsibilities, honesty of the leader sometimes sounds a synonym of his incompetence. When conducting complicated negotiations with rival countries, a politician with perfect honesty can never be praised more than one with appropriate cleverness and skills in sly machination.
Further, emphasis on morality of a public official is also problematical in that this emphasis may make our attention more on his personal life than on his visions about various social issues. Enjoying gossips on his sexual affairs and nitpicking his minor misdemeanors, we may rob him of his opportunity to contribute to the whole society with his unique visions and abilities.
Finally, the idea that morality is the fundamental virtue of any effective public official is controversial in another sense. By making public attention being enfettered with the past problems of a person, the morality-first view may encumber our discussion on public issues from heading into the future. Suddenly, an error made in the past is magnified, becoming all things that define him, and then eclipse one’s improved present and even his future dreams. Thus, emphasis on morality of a public figure may make us live in the past, neither in the reality nor for the future.
To sum,
One may say that morality is the single most important quality to assess a political leader (political leaders should be honest). In some sense, it is undeniable that dishonest (mendacious) leaders will accomplish little. However, many historical cases indicate that cleverness or even careful trick rather than simple-minded approaches works more to make a leader successful, especially in terms of encouragement of public’s psychology or efficient protection of national interests from the competitive world order.
Of course, few would disagree that effective leadership requires certain level of morality. With regard to implementation of a long-term policy supported by public trust, it seems unquestionable that honesty is not an option but a necessity for any political leader. If he is subject to distrust from the public because of his intolerable vices, his ideals, however valuable they might be, will confront a series of cynical indifference, and consequently can hardly find a way to success. In many Asian countries where most of their political elites have been contaminated by a tradition of bribery, many long-term visions proposed by those leaders tend to be aborted just because of the low level of trust from the public.
"Those who treat politics and morality as though they were separate realms fail to understand either the one or the other."Should politics and morality be treated as though they are mutually exclusive? I strongly agree with the speaker that any person claiming so fails to understand either the one or the other. An overly narrow definition of morality might require complete forthrightness and candidness in dealings with others. However, the morality of public politics embraces far broader concerns involving the welfare of society, and recognizes compromise as a necessary, and legitimate, means of addressing those concerns.
It is wrong-headed to equate moral behavior in politics with the simple notions of honesty and putting the other fellow's needs ahead of one's own----or other ways which we typically measure the morality of an individual's private behavior. Public politics is a game played among professional politicians--and to succeed in the game one must use the tools that are part-and-parcel of it. Complete forthrightness is a sign of vulnerability and naivete, neither of which will earn a politician respect among his or her opponents, and which opponents will use to every advantage against the honest politician. Moreover, the rhetoric of a successful politician eschews rigorous factually inquiry and indisputable fact while appealing to emotions, ideals, and subjective interpretation and characterizations. For example, the politician who claims his opponent is "anti-business," "bad for the economy," or "out of touch with what voters want" is not necessarily behaving immorally. We must understand that this sort of rhetoric is part-and-parcel of public politics, and thus kept in perspective does not harm the society--as long as it does not escalate to outright lying.
Those who disagree with the statement also fail to understand that in order to gain the opportunity for moral leadership politicians must engage in certain compromises along the way. Politics is a business born not only of idealism but also of pragmatism insofar as in order to be effective a politician must gain and hold onto political power. In my observation, some degree of pandering to the electorate and to those who might lend financial support for reelection efforts is necessary to maintain that position. Modern politics is replete with candidates who refused to pander, thereby mining their own chance to exercise effective leadership.
Finally, those who claim that effective politicians need not concern themselves with morality fail to appreciate that successful political leadership, if it is to endure, ultimately requires a certain measure of public morality-that is, serving the society with its best interests as the leader's overriding concern. Consider the many leaders, such as Stalin and Hitler, whom most people would agree were egregious violators of public morality. Ultimately such leaders forfeit their leadership as a result of the immoral means by which they obtain or wield their power. Or consider less egregious examples such as President Nixon, whose contempt for the very legal system that afforded him his leadership led to his forfeiture of that leadership. It seems to me that in the short term amoral or immoral public behavior might serve a political leader's interest in preserving power; yet in the long term such behavior invariably results in that leader's downfall.
In sum, I fundamentally agree with the statement. It recognizes that the "game" of politics calls for a certain amount of disingenuousness that we might associate with dubious private morality. And it recognizes that such behavior is a necessary means to the final objective of moral political leadership. Besides, at the end of the political game any politician failing to exercise moral leadership ultimately forfeits the game.