Integrity.

• Author: Linker, David

by Steven Carter Basic Books $22 By David Linker

On a recent issue of "Meet the Press," Colin Powell was asked if he would vote for Pat Buchanan. When Powell simply responded, "No, I would not," I actually laughed out loud, astonished by his blunt rhetoric in this age of spin control. Much of the American public's attraction to Powell has to do with their perception of precisely this forthright quality. No one really knows much about what he stands for. He's never been a legislator, and his writings are new and relatively few. There is just a sense that Powell does and says what he believes.

Stephen Carter's new book Integrity examines why this quality is so important, and so rare. As the title implies, at the heart of the book is an inquiry into what it means to be a "person of integrity," whom Carter defines as one who is "somehow undivided." There are three factors involved in leading an integral life: Discerning what is right and what is wrong, acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost, and stating openly the motivations behind your behavior.

Carter spends the first third of the book fleshing out these points with some degree of success (though by arguing that "we have a general duty to the right rather than the wrong, a duty as absolute as the duty to follow God's will," his treatment of moral discernment may ring hollow to the less devout). The true accomplishment of the book, however, is his treatment of the need for, and current lack of, integrity in American politics. Carter believes--and recent polls would substantiate his claim--that the trust that Americans have in their elected officials is abysmally low. Every time a Washington insider like Bob Dole gets up on the podium and denounces media violence, but then exempts a violent movie like "True Lies"--he said it was a "family film," presumably because it starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, an avid, public supporter to many Republican campaigns--the need for politics of integrity becomes only too clear. The candidacies of Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, and even Lamar Alexander were all propelled, to some degree, by these candidates' ability to define themselves as outsiders who don't play by Washington's deceitful rules. And in turn, the American public supported them, to some degree, because we're looking for leaders whose actions are thoughtful and whose words mean something.

Carter fares less well, though, when he goes beyond politics to take umbrage with hyperbolic job...