A Prescription for Better Politics?

This month's Russian Life features a retrospective on Joseph Brodsky, the brilliant St. Petersburg-born poet and essayist who became our gain when the Soviet authorities kicked him out of his native country. Brodsky wrote a lot of penetrating verse, but I like him best for his essays and meditations, one of which he delivered upon winning the Nobel Prize for literature in l987. I share it as an expression of hope for the future, not just for our own country but for everyone's:

"There is no doubt in my mind that had we been choosing our leaders on the basis of their reading experiences and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. It seems to me that a potential master of our fates should be asked, first of all, not about how he imagines the course of his foreign policy, but about his attitude toward Stendahl, Dickens, Dostoevksy. If only because the lock and stock of literature is indeed human diversity and perversity, it turns out to be a reliable antidote for any attempt--whether familiar or yet to be invented--towards summary solutions to the problems of human existence. As a form of moral insurance, at least, literature is much more dependable than a system of beliefs or a philosophical doctrine."

Whom do you suppose our current leadership favors on its collective nightstand, IF it favors anyone? Machiavelli, maybe?