Politics at its Best

Peter Schramm, the Executive Director of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, has a review of the movie Lincoln up at the Center's website.  This is the best part of the review and the best part about the movie itself:

The movie wonderfully shows what politics is at its best–constitutional statesmanship navigating between liberty as its good end and the low politics that are a necessary means toward it. Even when the give and take seems rough and base, the low is always in the service of the high. In the basement of the White House–over the image of a compass always pointing north–Lincoln lectures the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens on why the means of getting to that just end must always be varied. The radical Stevens wants to simplify it. He thinks only the principle matters; Lincoln knows better, he has a better understanding of politics. He understands that choosing what is truly the right thing is good only insofar as it can be realized. Principle needs intelligence, it needs prudence, practical wisdom, and this is politics at its best.

Those in politics need to think about both the ends and the means.  This is not simply leadership; it is statesmanship.