Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry writes about leadership, in a long paragraph that deserves to be quoted in full:

Gandhi thought people should generally be nicer to Untouchables but other than that the caste system was just fine, and the best way forward for India was to eradicate modern technology and revert to an agrarian state of proto-nature, a vision which might not unjustly be called totalitarian. Abraham Lincoln played fast and loose with habeas corpus in ways that would make Dick Cheney blanch, famously wrote “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”, and reassured in many speeches that just because slavery could be abolished, don’t worry, it won’t ever mean that blacks will be allowed to marry white people. Martin Luther King let himself be taped by the FBI, even though he knew he was under surveillance, committing adultery and yelling “I’m not a Negro tonight!” Although many people who admire him would, I don’t count John Paul II’s stance on matters of sex as a flaw, but you could pin on him the institutional Church’s indifference to pedophilia scandals, if only because the buck stops at his desk. Henry Ford was a rabid anti-Semite and a worshipper of fascists everywhere and, of course, Margaret Sanger embraced eugenics with gut-churning glee. Charles de Gaulle, one of the men in history I admire the most, lied his way into office, implying as strongly as possible that he was the candidate of French Algeria when he had resolved to end it, and used constitutionally dubious means to advance his political ends. Winston Churchill was a racist and a retrograde, and it was probably as much a blessing for the world that he rose to power in 1939 and that he was voted out in 1946 (in particular, while the NHS is not what I would do if I had to design a health system from scratch, Churchill’s views on the NHS make Ron Paul sound like Peter Orzag). FDR committed countless blunders with damaging repercussions (upon reading the Yalta minutes one gets the feeling that he looked into Stalin’s eyes and “was able to get a sense of his soul”) and lied to the American and worldwide public throughout his public life about his health, picking a crazy guy as VP even though he knew his days were numbered.

Gobry suggests that we can respond to the flaws of great leaders either by rejecting their “great” status or accepting them as flawed human beings. But what if the flaws and the heroism are different manifestations of the same unusual psychology that propels people to greatness in the first place? Maybe Churchill would never have had the resolve to defeat the Nazis if he hadn’t been inculcated into the military culture of Victorian England, with all its racism and paternalism. Maybe Lincoln’s ruthlessness and determination to preserve the Union, even at the expense of the slaves, were the things that ultimately put him in a position to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Maybe MLK’s extramarital affairs and civil rights leadership were different manifestations of the same underlying will to power. Who knows? This is a more unpleasant interpretation, because it suggests that untainted, heroic leadership is impossible - not just practically impossible, because of the inherent flaws of human beings, but logically impossible, because the flaws are a necessary precondition for the heroism. Still, it’s worth considering the possibility.