In his 1919 lecture Politik als Beruf, Politics as a Vocation, Max Weber named three qualities a politician needs. “Leidenschaft – Verantwortungsgefühl – Augenmaß.” Passion, a sense of responsibility and a sense of proportion. Then he named the danger. It is ordinary vanity, “die Todfeindin aller sachlichen Hingabe und aller Distanz,” the deadly enemy of all devotion to the matter and of all distance. Vanity tempts the politician to become an actor and to ask only about the impression he makes. In politics, Weber wrote, there are in the end only two kinds of deadly sin. One is Unsachlichkeit, losing sight of the matter. The other, often though not always the same, is irresponsibility.