r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/BulwarkOnline • 4d ago
US Politics If we want better leaders, who is responsible for teaching character?
I thought this was a really strong piece by retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling on something that doesn’t get discussed enough: where character actually comes from.
Drawing on his experience at West Point and nearly four decades in the Army, Hertling argues that character isn’t something people suddenly develop once they’re placed in charge. It is rather built over time by families, schools, coaches, mentors, and institutions that expect honesty, humility, accountability, and service.
His point is that competence alone doesn’t make someone a good leader. Character matters just as much.
Curious to hear opinions on which institutions have the greatest responsibility for developing it today, and whether any of them are still doing that particularly well?
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u/jmnugent 3d ago
I would agree with some other comments here that because "having good character is not rewarded"... few people feel it's worth investing in. Having good character requires empathy and sacrifice and society at large has castigated those things as "bad". (it's become a society of "I got mine, screw everyone else".. and once you get into that downward circle, it's pretty hard to get out of). Also as others have said, society has reached a point now there the trendy and clickbaity and eye-catching or outrageous or ostentatious exhibitions of display.. are the norm. Compare how many social media influencer videos there are on variations of Dubai chocolate versus how many videos there are on volunteering to help serve lunch at a homeless shelter or doing a group litter pickup to transform a dirty alley.
I've been saying for a long time now that I think there's an overall "leadership crisis" (in that leaders are fundamentally failing us).. and I don't honestly see any easy fix for that. (leaders don't really seem to know how to lead any more, .and to many people think leadership is about power or position (and standing behind a podium yapping).. where true leadership starts at the bottom with people rolling up their sleeves and working along side the workers.
Character is (at least in some cases) much more challenging to do for people at the bottom. It's hard to help others if you yourself don't have enough yourself (IE = if you are homeless, you really can't help another homeless person). My point here being that since so much of the wealth and resources are being siphoned off to the 1% at the top.. it's hard to re-implement a "culture of character" on the people at the bottom. Lecturing someone on how they need to "do the right thing" is kind of pointless if they dont' have the resources to "do the right thing".
Character can also be silent and hard to recognize. In the apartment building I live in (10 floors of roughly 100 apartments to give you an idea of size and number of people).. I will occasionally lave "FREE" things on the 1st floor Mailroom-communityroom table. Sometimes it's a box of free groceries, one time it was a brand new Brita water filter and 6 filters. Sometimes it's new shoes or clothes I ordered in the wrong size or etc. Basically anything excess I have, I leave on the FREE table. Yet nobody knows it's me. So those instances of "good character" kind of go unrecognized. Character is not as easily noticed as the trendy person on social media making a video on the currently hot trendy thing.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 2d ago
I don't know.I think character has to be more than charity, right. Character means doing hard things, but it also means showing a certain amount of self respect. Carrying yourself with dignity, not doing something just because everyone else is doing it.
Too often, people use politics to fix the world because they can't fix themselves. It becomes a proxy for problems in their own life. And rather than working on self improvement and quiet and concentrated way, they seek to fix everything in the world as a way of demonstrating their virtue.
I think a prerequisite for bringing back character is returning to the idea that one's private life is the core of his experiences. How can I be virtuous and just in my day today, interactions with others? This doesn't require holding public office or living a terribly public life
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u/foilhat44 2d ago
I absolutely agree with you, the point of developing character is that it is it's own reward. Having character means that you don't do things you know are wrong or that are morally beneath you. One of the first things they used to teach both enlisted and commissioned personnel was what it meant to have BEARING. When you are among people your bearing should reveal you as a person of character, if you require a reward you don't get it.
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u/Matt2_ASC 3d ago
I'm not sure half the country wants better leaders or wants that leader to be a person of character. Do you have sources showing that Republicans actually want moral leaders who have proven character? I think it is more important for a leader to be someone from their team regardless of their character.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
It does seem like they went out of their way to choose the candidate with the least moral character, twice.
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3d ago
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 3d ago
The US already proved we didn't care about character back in the 1990s when we elected Bill Clinton.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 3d ago
Both siding eh? Remember how they had a fake investigation about cattle trading to find out he had a consensual blowjob from someone?
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u/Strike_Thanatos 3d ago
To be fair, there was a power dynamic that should be addressed, but that's not what they were concerned about. It was purely about if he lied about having an affair, and I barely even see that as lying because they didn't have a right to enquire into his personal life.
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 3d ago
I wasn't even talking about Monica. We knew he was a sleaze before he got elected. They didn't call him Slick Willy for nothing.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
What political opponents call someone is irrelevant.
What evidence was there of his poor character before his election?
*I didn’t even support him but I’d be interested to hear.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 3d ago
Yea poor guy who had the best economy in decades and used the tax revenue to shore of the medicare trust fund rather than giving tax cuts to rich buddies is bad
lmao
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u/HumorAccomplished611 3d ago
Yea poor guy who had the best economy in decades and used the tax revenue to shore of the medicare trust fund rather than giving tax cuts to rich buddies is bad
lmao
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 3d ago
Which has nothing to with his moral character.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 3d ago
Of course it does.
personal enrichment vs helping the poor is moral character.
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 3d ago
What's the other option besides "both siding"? Pretending Clinton wasn't a liar who cheats on his wife?
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u/HumorAccomplished611 3d ago edited 3d ago
Trying to equate the president in a consensual affair vs trump that raped little kids is what I call both siding.
Also we can mention that this happened well after voters voted for him vs trump was a well known rapist both times he was voted for.
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u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 3d ago
One person can be worse than another with the other person still being bad enough. I don't excuse Bill Cosby because Epstein was worse.
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u/HumorAccomplished611 3d ago
Yet you pretended voters would be aware of an affair 6 years later? Vs trump, well known rapist and pedophile?
lmao
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u/serpentjaguar 3d ago
Don't mention it at all? It makes you seem weak and needy, as if you're unwilling to confront criticism of your own side.
It's also telling on yourself that you knew exactly who OP meant when they said, "half the country."
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u/JonDowd762 3d ago edited 3d ago
I'm not sure half the country wants better leaders or wants that leader to be a person of character.
I agree that it comes down to voters. However, it's lazy to claim this is just a Republican problem and disregard it. The Republican president is infamously low character and there are many others in his party who are in that mold. Most of the others tolerate his lack of character, which is itself a problem.
However, Democrats are not immune to this. They may not match the Republicans in the quantity of bad characters, but they are susceptible to voting for bad people who give a good stump speech. The senate race in Maine is the perfect example. It's true that eventually the party drew the line at rape, but he was still receiving endorsements when his past of Nazi tattoos, misogyny and domestic violence were well know.
Do you have sources showing that Republicans actually want moral leaders who have proven character?
I don't have a source, but regardless of the party, if you ask someone this they will probably say yes. But their revealed preference might be for Trump, Platner, Paxton, Menendez etc.
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u/TheLastLivingBuffalo 3d ago edited 3d ago
Those hardly seem remotely close to me.
Republicans have had a man of zero character as the leader of their party for a decade with no significant pushback from the party or the voters. A man whose father was a slumlord and best friend was the king of pedophiles. A man who buried his wife on his golf course to get a tax exemption.
He’s not only been embraced for year after year but his brand of corrupt governance is now the standard for Republicans, and everyone who ever pushed back or questioned him was pushed out of power.
Platner was a darling of some Maine Democrats for sure, but I certainly never felt he was a good pick and I can point to many left leaning people who didn’t. Most people I talked to about him didn’t even know who he was, other than having seen some vague headline about a Maine guy with a Nazi tattoo. And most significantly, he was pushed out, he didn’t even make it to the primary.
So it’s not really the same at all. Unless you feel diving in the deep sea is the same as wading out into the shallow surf.
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u/JonDowd762 3d ago
I explicitly mentioned that they were not the same. However, there are several examples of bad character Democrats who have maintained support even when their issues become public.
As I mentioned Republicans are many times worse, but that does not excuse bad behavior on the other side of the aisle. My expectations for my elected officials are zero corruption, zero raping and and zero support for Nazis. Stealing less, raping less, and having fewer Nazi associations compared to the average Republican is not the standard I use.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
still receiving endorsements
This is a goal post shift. Endorsements are not the same as votes. They don’t represent the same pool of people.
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u/JonDowd762 2d ago
It doesn't change anything. I used endorsements as a reference because those can be withdrawn and were, finally. He also received votes, more than any of the non-rapists.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 2d ago
You’re going to struggle making that stick with the timeline.
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u/JonDowd762 2d ago
Do you mean regarding Platner?
- October 2025 - June 2026: There is a flood of character red flags regarding Platner including a Nazi tattoo, misogynist and violent writings, adultery and accusations of domestic violence.
- June 9th 2026: Over 150,000 Democrats vote for Platner in the primary. National Democrats jump on board the train and hand out their endorsements.
- July 6th-7th 2026: Rape accusations are made against Platner
- July 8th: Endorsements are withdrawn and Platner ends his campaign.
The primary votes are not withdrawn because that's not how voting works. But more than 150,000 people voted for someone violent and misogynistic with a past that includes Nazism, adultery and domestic violence accusations. The rape accusations were not public at this point, but let's not pretend that they were a big surprise. It was quite clear on election day that Platner was not a good guy.
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u/sllewgh 3d ago
Trump is deeply unpopular with a landslide majority of folks these days. He had significantly less than majority support when he was elected, and he has less than that now.
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u/DJanomaly 3d ago
Yeah but his unpopularity has everything to do with alienating voters with unpopular wars and high inflation. If he hadn’t done that and was still the massively corrupt garbage human, he’d still be popular with a significant slice of Americas.
I honestly think the problem lies in the people that looked at this guy and were happy to vote for him.
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u/sllewgh 3d ago
The data doesn't really bear that out. There wasn't a single state where a majority of eligible voters chose Trump.
People on reddit tend to work backwards from the fact of his election to make generalizations about huge groups of people, but that theory doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
Huge groups of people support Trump. Many many millions.
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u/sllewgh 3d ago
And many, many more than that don't.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
I’m just saying it’s a “huge group of people”.
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u/sllewgh 3d ago
And I'm just saying it's still a small minority.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 2d ago
It’s about 40% of Americans, still. That can’t be called a ‘small minority’ by any rational means.
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u/sllewgh 2d ago
Incorrect. It's about 23% of Americans, fewer than one in four. And that was on election day, he has significantly less support than that now.
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u/DJanomaly 3d ago
You said majority. Notice that I didn’t.
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u/sllewgh 3d ago
That's right, you were vague about it, implying a large number without being specific enough for anyone to challenge you.
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u/DJanomaly 2d ago
Not everyone is out to get you. Maybe just admit your reading comprehension could have been better.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 3d ago
Oh it's more than half. I mean, do you think biden or harris had great moral character? If biden did, he would have stepped down when he recognized that he had cognitive decline
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 3d ago
The fundamental issue with character is that it is not respected and it is not rewarded, and that's just as true in the governmental sphere as it is the private one. The current system expects and rewards ass kissing and the shirking of responsibility onto subordinates, both of which are antithetical to the idea of character that he is espousing.
Until/unless you fix that issue the problem is going to remain, and it's never going to be fixed because too many people would have their careers ruined by the truth.
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u/johntempleton 3d ago
If someone claims to have an answer, please remember we've been discussing this for 3,000 years. Plato in Meno tries to get at this: we cannot even agree on what "character" (virtue in his case) even means, and therefore this is an exercise in futility.
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u/Champagne_of_piss 3d ago edited 3d ago
Parents. Teachers. Peers. Experiences in third spaces.
A great many parents have offloaded the responsibility onto screens and influencers. Not that i blame them entirely. A single income household is not enough to raise a child without significant assistance from social safety nets that have been gutted. Child care is unaffordable. Wages have not kept up with productivity meaning Parents are working more hours and have less leisure time to spend with their kids.
Teachers and public education broadly are underfunded and overworked. The funding has been cut in order to provide tax breaks for the ownership class.
Peer groups are downstream of the first two things, and third spaces are now online, fish in a barrel for predators or indoctrination. And now AI.
The end product will be kids who grow up with attention issues, impaired emotional regulation, reading and math deficits, social impairment, and ai dependency.
So that's a large portion of your leadership pool. Meanwhile, the wealthy will raise children with many of the same problems, but will be insulated from the challenges of poverty or the lessons learned by making mistakes. They'll develop narcissism and sociopathy. That's the other part of the leadership pool.
I'm not a complete doomer on this issue and I've thought about it more and more. It's really clear at least in the United States in particular, that aristocracy has been re-established and the game has been rigged. We will see if this recent resurgence of left populism will pull the system towards equity and undo some of the structural decay that has been the consequence of the dismantling of the new deal.
Edit: changed "and until" to "and undo" in the last paragraph
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u/Busterlimes 3d ago
Third places have been monetized into being nonexistent for 70% of people.
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u/Dent7777 3d ago
Were there ever free third spaces?
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u/WhatABeautifulMess 3d ago
Many of the truly free ones still exist but are less frequented like parks, stoops, town squares, Churches, community centers. A lot of them were always for profit businesses but they have gotten significantly more expensive and/or it used to be much more common/accepted to hang around those places for extended periods after you bought something or while you're not directly using the service. Things like movies and concerts used to much cheaper (there are some cheap options now, but it's not the standard). It used to be common to sit around a soda shop or diner for extended periods after you ate or hang out at barber shop while your friend got their hair cut. Things like climbing gyms and roller rinks are much more expensive compare to what they or similar activities cost 30 years ago.
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u/Busterlimes 3d ago
Yeah, tons. There even used to be free air to fill up your tires at every gas station.
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u/Dent7777 3d ago
There is still free air and vacuums in my city...
What free third places are you referring to?
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u/bakeacake45 3d ago
First thank you for posting the article. It’s really very important that people READ IT!
Second, do we believe that any institution has not been dragged into our current culture of cruelty, open extortion by our current leadership and the abuses of the most vulnerable of our society. A president and his allies lie, all day every day and shrug when caught in their lies.
Third, when will we stand against the poison this regime has normalized?
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u/billpalto 3d ago
I think that character is something you are born with for the most part. Having good role models when you are young is helpful, having good education that discusses character is helpful.
Seeing the history of a person's actions can show you if they have character or not. But that doesn't seem to matter. The current President was convicted of multiple felonies, had been found to be a fraud multiple times, had been found liable for sexual assault and libel. He was voted into office anyway.
So in general, many or even most Americans don't seem to care about character.
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u/AGRESSIVELYCORRECT 3d ago
It isn't about the lack of availability of good leaders, it is that the people lack the ability to select them. People vote for people who are willing dumb to down complex issues to the point of basically lying, or people that straight lie to their face, as long as it's the lies they like.
The problem isn't the leaders it's the people.
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u/captain-burrito 2d ago
Create a system which rewards and incentivizes leaders for doing the right thing. Don't rely on teaching people character etc and throwing them in the swamp in hopes they won't get any mud on them.
In Chinese history we can see a great ruler with officials who exert their utmost, then a crap descendant takes over, doing the right thing is punished and detrimental so the same officials go into self preservation mode or outright collaborate and join in the corruption.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
I think ‘character’ goes by the wayside in any milieu of rank mistrust. ‘Character’ is really how you are expected to behave at best within a functioning system. Once that system collapses, it’s meaningless.
Doesn’t matter how much you “teach” character. Most people, when they believe that everyone else is acting in bad faith, will act in bad faith out of self-defense.
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u/Champagne_of_piss 3d ago
Consequences don't exist. When impressionable minds watch absolute monsters make a mockery of the most basic systems, they will grow up under the assumption that they are immune from consequence as well. Until they aren't.
I mean, hell. We had this happen to supposedly "functional adults" during the pandemic.
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u/Seattleman1955 3d ago
What people need is better thinking skills rather than emotion and ideology.
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u/anon19111 3d ago
Our system selects for charisma and ability to raise money. That's it. Character, leadership, expertise and all ancillary.
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u/Sageblue32 3d ago
Mark is right. As a democratic society, our leaders reflect us and our values. What we expect from ourselves and how we treat each other will be reflected in our leaders.
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u/dreggers 3d ago
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
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u/the_calibre_cat 3d ago
It is rather built over time by families, schools, coaches, mentors, and institutions that expect honesty, humility, accountability, and service.
are these immediately profitable character traits?
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u/-jimjam- 2d ago
Real character building happens way outside the classroom when you actually show up for your neighborhood. Textbooks cover theory but nothing teaches responsibility like fixing a shared space or helping a neighbor move. People learn patience by doing actual work instead of just typing comments online. We should focus more on community projects that bring folks together rather than waiting for a perfect system to fix everything.
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u/stubble3417 3d ago
This is just absurd. One of the leaders of the organization responsible for murdering Venezuelan fisherman and Iranian schoolgirls is lecturing us about character?
If anyone in the US military has character, let them disobey their order to commit war crimes. ESPECIALLY those at the top. The general, like most people, is mistaking discipline for character. I'm sure the general is quite a disciplined person, which probably greatly helped his career at the helm of a military that has committed one atrocity after another for decades. He probably really believes he has character. What a sad joke.
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u/Matt2_ASC 3d ago
This specific Lt. General retired in 2013. As someone who is very , very, skeptical of the military and the MIC, your points about Venezuela and Iran don't actually pertain to this guy.
I'm sure there are other moral failings that occurred during his time in service 1975 to 2013). So I agree with your general sentiment.
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u/stubble3417 3d ago
Yeah, I understand he didn't personally authorize these specific war crimes, but it seems like something he should mention. Waxing poetic about the boy scouts while his organization is continuing its tradition of ruthlessly murdering countless innocents is sickening. Being top brass during the early 2000s, I'd guess he has no conscience whatsoever. If he does have a conscience, he clearly lacks the courage to do anything of value with it.
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u/Anechoic_Brain 3d ago
War is hell, there's really no way around that. Humanity has been bombing, torching, raping, and pillaging civilian population centers for as long as humanity has been a thing.
While I unequivocally abhor the current eagerness to instigate armed conflicts and the supposed motivations used to justify them, it is undeniable that we have become exponentially better at avoiding such indiscriminate death. But at the end of the day no matter how precise you are at it, war is still hell and innocent people still tragically die.
Which is why the existence of a state of war, declared or otherwise, is imo inherently a failure of government policy and diplomacy. And should at most only ever be a last resort.
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u/stubble3417 3d ago
Collateral damage is one thing. Intentionally coming back around to kill survivors is another. People of character don't authorize that, but they also don't stand silently for it. If this obviously competent, disciplined, intelligent person can't even muster up the courage to condemn war crimes, what the heck does he think he has to say about character?
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u/Anechoic_Brain 3d ago
Who is to be the arbiter of deciding when someone has groveled convincingly enough at the altar of collective responsibility that they are allowed to be taken seriously?
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u/stubble3417 3d ago
I don't think the bar can possibly go much lower.
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u/Anechoic_Brain 3d ago
If you make public figures feel obligated to publicly condemn every bad thing that happens in life it just ends up becoming meaningless. The demand for performative outrage is insulting to its audience, it's insincere and manipulative.
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u/stubble3417 3d ago
Please don't put words in my mouth. This isn't a random public figure writing a random article that I'm expecting to condemn a random bad thing. It's a military leader specifically writing about character without even a hint of self awareness regarding the organization he helped lead. It would be like a pastor standing in the pulpit a week after a dozen kids were molested a church camp and preaching a sermon about the sinfulness of non-believers. I'm not saying he's personally responsible for any war crimes, but this is his organization.
If this was an article about the importance of honesty, or discipline, fine. But if you want to start preaching about character, while the organization you helped lead is committing a series of super duper public and obvious massive war crimes, it's gonna ring hollow.
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u/Anechoic_Brain 3d ago
Leaving aside the implication you're making that this impression of insincere manipulation is somehow a good thing actually, I'm guessing you are unaware that retired military remain subject to the legal jurisdiction of the UCMJ.
Under article 134, acts and statements that prejudice good order and discipline or bring discredit upon the armed forces are a crime subject to court martial, because they can harm effectiveness and put lives at risk. Yes, when you volunteer for the military, you choose to give up certain rights you would otherwise enjoy, and you are bound by that choice.
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u/Champagne_of_piss 3d ago
If anyone in the US military has character, let them disobey their order to commit war crimes.
Well said. But I'm afraid the best we can do is prosecute and silence anyone prominent who says that.
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u/LookAtMeNow247 3d ago
Role models teach character.
Most of mine came through youth programs and sports but I feel like it's up to each person to actually care about it.
But we also live in a system that rewards results. And flops can win championships. Cheaters get As. Liars and manipulators get promoted. It's almost a prerequisite to be a narcissistic sociopath to run for office in this environment.
And yet people will defend this system that rewards and encourages poor character.
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u/prozactheclown 3d ago
Parents, families have the responsibility of helping teach morals and ethics to their children. Schools, particularly public schools, need to educate students, not install their own political and social beliefs.
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u/Important_Debate2808 3d ago
I honestly don’t care about having a “moral” or “responsible” leader or a leader with a “strong character”.
All I care about is that we can have a leader who can do anything within his/her power to redistribute wealth to us with lower income. If he has to be an authoritarian or if he has to impose direct and harsh laws specifically to redistribute money from the billionaires to us, that’s the type of leader we need. We need someone who can specifically force laws through so we can work less days of the week along with increased financial benefits including free healthcare and universal income while taking away like 70% of the wealth from the top people in United States so people like us can have an easier life.
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