checks into any decision-making. TheWrst is a voice independent of the claims of
personal power. This voice may be inside the leader’s head or it may be standing in
front of him. The former is illustrated by President Lincoln’s determination to hold
the scheduled 1864 election as scheduled, despite being in the midst of a deterior-
ating civil war and the strong likelihood of his own defeat. Lincoln understood that
regardless of his personal political fate, the cause of constitutional government
under the Union would already be defeated if the election were cancelled or
postponed. The latter embodiment of institutional thinking in a staVperson is
illustrated by an incident from FDR’s presidency. Rudolph Forster had been in the
White House since the McKinley administration and as Executive Clerk had seen
presidents come and go. When, in October 1944 , FDR left on one of his last
campaign trips, Foster, with a guilty air, shook the president’s hand warmly and
wished him good luck. As Foster waved goodbye to the departing car, Roosevelt
told his companion, with pride and real emotion in his voice, ‘‘That’s practically
theWrst time in all these years that Rudolph has ever stepped out of character and
spoken to me as if I were a human being instead of just another President’’
(Sherwood 1950 , 209 ). Roosevelt, who had had special legislation passed to allow
Foster to stay on indeWnitely past the legal retirement age, understood that with
at least some people around you who are thinking institutionally, there is a
greater chance of being told what you need to hear rather than simply what you
want to hear.
A second reality check is institutional thinking’s protection against the willful
ignorance called presentism, the arrogant belief in the privileged entitlements and
moral superiority attached to one’s own little moment in time. Institutional
thinking transforms the past into memory, which is a way of keeping alive what
is meaningful about people’s deepest hopes and fears. ‘‘As such, memory is another
evidence that we have aXexible and creative relation to time, the guiding principle
being not the clock but the qualitative signiWcance of our experiences’’ (May 1953 ,
258 ). Likewise, institutional thinking transforms the future into a present voice by a
concern for passing on what has been received. Memory and anticipation speak
together in the present tense.
One could go on listing various advantages of institutional thinking in
politics and society at large. Because it is attentive to rule-following rather than
personal strategies to achieve personal ends, thinking institutionally enhances
predictability in conduct. Predictability in turn can enhance trust, which can
enhance reciprocating loyalty, which can facilitate bargaining, compromise,
andWduciary relationships. Because institutional thinking goes beyond merely
contingent, instrumental attachments, it takes daily life into something deeper
than a passing parade of personal moods and feelings.
In the end, the advantages of institutional thinking come down to what is
distinctly human. The point is not that it is wrong to see institutions as cages
of human oppression, but that this is a dangerously incomplete half-truth.
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