Watergate and Prophetic Polities

Abstract

Watergate has prompted a good many voices to proclaim the urgent need for a return to constitutional government. I would like to take advantage of the current public interest in a higher morality in politics to make the case for moving up to an even higher level of politics, to a pattern of politics that I have dubbed “Prophetic Politics.” In making my case I should like to explore, compare, and criticize four patterns of politics that inevitably get pulled into the dialogue. These four are “Prophetic Politics,” “Machiavellian Politics” (illustrated so notoriously by Watergate), “Utopian Politics” (whose principles and practices must be distinguished from “Prophetic Politics,” if “Prophetic Politics” is to get a fair hearing by political realists), and “Constitutional Politics” (whose strength is being sorely tested by the Watergate revelations). I will try in this article to indicate why, indeed, I believe we must move up to a new level in politics; why we have to be on guard against and reject “Machiavellian Politics,” why it is important to distinguish between “Prophetic” and “Utopian Politics,” and why a return to “Constitutional Politics” is good but not good enough. I shall argue that there is a striking similarity between our answer to the “why” question—“Why must we move up to a new level of politics?”— and the central characteristics of “Prophetic Politics.” I shall identify the strengths and weaknesses of “Machiavellian,” “Constitutional,” and “Utopian Politics” and indicate how the practitioners of “Prophetic Politics,” while true to its central principles, can incorporate the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses of the other three patterns. I hope this analysis will place our current alarm and concern about Watergate in a larger theoretical perspective, and enable us to derive some larger value from the outpouring revelations of the media.