Barack Obama in new book:

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This triggers a series of musings with the incoming president, in which he asks himself why he really wants to do this, despite the fact that his wife really does not want to. He asks himself if he can have dark motives, “a raw hunger, a blind ambition obscured by nice formulations to be of service.” He wonders if he is characterized by the need to live up to the wishful thinking of his sacrificial mother or his absent father. It is interesting that the musings do not end with a no, it is not so.

It’s a tension in politics that will never disappear: Precisely the profession that is by definition selfless, for men and women who must find solutions for how people’s lives can be better, attracts people who also want power and fame for their own part. It is difficult to be a top politician without a good dose of ambition, because you can not be uncomfortable exercising power or appearing in public with such a job. You must also have the power to put your ideas into action.

That was why it felt somewhat unfair when Hillary Clinton was accused of being “ambitious”. Of course she was, but she was in good company – everyone who tries to become president of the United States believes that they themselves are the one who is best suited to be the most powerful person in the world. These are barely modest little mice.

But it’s going fast unattractive, if not dangerous, if the personal ambitions are given higher priority than the ambitions on behalf of the good causes, if the voters feel that the politician in question thinks more of himself than of them.

It is therefore so many top politicians are careful to describe the path to high office as a kind of vocation, as something they were almost driven to do, rather than something they sought out for their own part. As is well known, Jonas Gahr Støre had to ask Hallingskarvet for advice on whether he should become Labor leader or not. In William Shakespeare’s “Richard III”, the main character, the ambitious Richard, creates a small public theater, where he is supposed to be offered the royal crown and then push it away, whereupon the people are supposed to beg him to become king. The people are not so impressed, but Richard’s deployed supporters take care of the shouting and prayers, and he becomes king.

The Oslo school is not a sect

A figure as Barack Obama can speak more freely about his own ambitions now, as he is no longer dependent on the next election. But in any case, it is liberating to have a man of power who knows himself well enough to admit that it is not just altruistic motives that drive them. Obama has shown similar abilities for self-examination before, when in his first autobiography, “Dreams from my Father”, he wrote about how tempting it could be to want to get away from the black community, and rather become one of the few, exotic members of the “neutral” white majority. He wrote about how annoyed people like him could be in the face of everyday racism, not only on behalf of all blacks who experienced the same thing, although it was more convenient to say to themselves – but because it was a sign that they were not yet were accepted, despite the fact that they all had outward signs of success.

One of Obama’s role models, Abraham Lincoln, was an extremely ambitious man who all his life problematized and was a little ashamed of his own zeal to go far. He seems to have been fully aware, and happy with, that the bloody civil war also gave him an opportunity to become one of the most significant American presidents in history.

Obama and Lincoln both proved willing to take an honest, hard look at themselves and their own motives. They were also eager to be challenged by others. Lincoln famously put together a “team of rivals” when he placed his own political opponents in government. Obama writes about something of the same when he writes about the election of Republican Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense: He wants one, he writes, that can challenge his own deepest convictions.

Nor is it necessarily some contradiction between wanting power for their own sake and doing something good for others: There is no doubt that both Obama and Lincoln were strongly involved in the issues they fought for. In “A Promised Land,” Obama finds calm in a phrase from Dr. Martin Luther King jr. The civil rights activist writes that it is natural to want to be first, but that selfish impulses can be curbed by focusing on worthy goals. You may want to be the foremost and best at accomplishing something good. If we get politicians who think like that, it will be preferable to those who pretend that the dilemmas do not exist at all.

The criticism is deadly

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