Surveying American politics, culture and society in Democracy and Leadership, Irving Babbitt found little to admire and much to criticize. Against the notion that “the people” could be trusted to choose worthy leaders, he reminded his readers that “Millions of Americans were ready not so very long ago to hail William Jennings Bryan as a ‘peerless leader’”—while in the present “Other millions are ready apparently to bestow a similar salute on Henry Ford” (308). Babbitt was willing to acknowledge that “Judged by any quantitative test, the American achievement is impressive” (265), but he was quick to add that “qualitatively it is somewhat less satisfying” (266). The understatement of this latter evaluation is surely to be taken ironically rather than literally, especially in the light of Babbitt’s considered judgment that “The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen” (269). Although Babbitt was aware that there were “many other countries besides America” in which “vulgarity and triviality are more or less visible” (267), he couldn’t help feeling that “we in America are perhaps preeminent in lack of distinction” (267-68). There was little in the contemporary scene that promised sustenance for the “moral imagination” to which Babbitt, drawing on Edmund Burke, turned in hopes of bringing “the experience of the past . . . to bear as a living force upon the present.” (127-28). Babbitt did, however, find at least one element of American culture worthy of respect, one tradition shared by many Americans to which he could give his approval and on which he could base his hopes for American democracy. Babbitt holds up what he calls…
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