Plato's advise to President-Elect Obama Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Plato's advise to President-Elect Obama - Essay Example A difficult, if not impossible, task awaits you to start clean when you take office. So much has gone wrong, and the consequences of previous rulers’ actions will follow you throughout your time in office. But take my advice, the genuine ruler â€Å"will take society and human character as his canvas, and begin by scraping it clean. . . . [H]e will not consent to take in hand either an individual or a state or to draft laws, until he is given a clean surface to work on or has cleansed it himself† (p. 209). You can’t hope to fix anything if failed policies and actions can’t be scraped away to make room for better governing. Weigh carefully in your mind, when you’re asked to make decisions, the worth of a specific action, over and above what it means to those who petition you. Don’t be afraid to end policies that weren’t set up with the people’s best interest in mind in the first place. Keep the greater good of the whole populatio n in mind, rather than the complaining voices of lobbyists and congressmen. Philosophically weigh the consequences of the war and the nation’s economic policies, and make decisions from a clean slate if those previous policies aren’t working. The man who held office before you seemed to me drunk with power. I believe â€Å"access to power must be confined to men who are not in love with it† (p. 235). If you fall in love with being leader of what’s been called the greatest nation on earth, you’ll forget why you were elected to this office in the first place: to serve the people. Make your life good and wise first, and then you’ll be happy and be able to rule the nation philosophically and not through power. â€Å"All goes wrong when, starved for lack of anything good in their own lives, men turn to public affairs hoping to snatch from thence the happiness they hunger for† (p. 235). Men and women who rule the nation must be philosophers