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will--machiavelli talks more about the role of the prince as managing chance, with the objective of staying in power. the problem with a proposal like yours is basically that it would lock even very well-meaning people into place even if the situations they confront require modes of action at odds with what they previously understood that they would do, had things moved in a straight line from the point they fashioned that understanding and took and oath to carry it out.
within that, there's the entire question of political power, what it is, how it is different from personal ethics. you can maybe imagine a situation in which someone with strongly held personal ethics would act in a manner that is consistent with their personal values but generate outcomes that would be problematic--let's assume that the bush administration understood itself to be acting if not in good faith then at least in a manner consistent with what it held to be ethical in its invasion of iraq---if that assumption holds, then the problem is evident.
also, it's hard to say whether machiavelli endorses the political situation that creates the prince--in other writings, he is an advocate of a type of direct democracy--so it's not obvious what he is advocating across the book. you can read it in multiple ways. one is as a manual of realpolitik--another is as a kind of denunciation of it. you can go back and forth about that endlessly, which is what makes it a fun text to play with.
one underlying question is maybe interesting here though:
which matters more--being ethical or appearing to be ethical?
what's the difference?
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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