“If Hillary signed off on a private investigator, let’s call it a minus. It wouldn’t change my support for her because there are so many pluses for her, like her stance on abortion.”
–—Feminist attorney Gloria Allred, responding to a New York Times report regarding Hillary Clinton’s efforts to intimidate and discredit her husband’s various female accusers.
This is the language of corruption and ethics cowardice, and it is very close to a majority mindset among Americans., who increasingly rationalize away what should be taken as unquestionable proof that a leader or potential leader is untrustworthy and therefor unqualified to lead. In respect to the Clintons, this is a flashback: feminists like Gloria Steinem betrayed their central principles to make rationalizations for Bill Clinton during the Monica scandal (which was a about workplace harassment and a President lying under oath, not about illicit sex), again because he supported abortion.
Here, on Ethics Alarms, the never-ending debate concerns whether leaders should be chosen based on their positions, or their character. That the two parties are officially all-in betting that character is both irrelevant to governing and to the voting public is proven by the disgusting Clinton-Trump choice. The message is that character doesn’t matter at all, which makes it more than strange that the news media and the Clinton campaign’s primary focus is on attacking Trump’s character. If character mattered as it once did and should, Trump wouldn’t be nominated, and neither would Hillary. If sufficient numbers of voters cared that the standard bearers of their pet policy positions were dishonest, ruthless, cruel, cynical, incompetent and manipulative human beings with little genuine regard for fairness, honesty, responsibility, integrity, respect or citizenship, this election would be literally impossible, except in some hideous alternate universe.
Indeed, this may be such an alternate universe. The Presidency, as originally conceived, demanded an individual of remarkable character, at least in his public persona. It was George Washington’s reputation for honesty and dedication to ethical values as much as his military exploits that caused him to be chosen as our first President by men who were more brilliant than he but less fit to lead. He was the template, and thanks in great part to Washington’s ability to live up to it in office, it dominated our choice of Presidents and to some extent lesser leaders for centuries.
The wisdom of this is evident, or should be. A leader is a role model and a powerful force in the culture. Ethical leaders create ethical citizens and ethical cultures. The people respond by regarding aspirants to power who don’t fit the template as unfit for power regardless of what fine policies they support. Ultimately, it comes down to trust. It is foolish to trust schemers, liars and hypocrites.
How did Allred’s attitude become so prevalent that the nation is on the verge of electing a President that most Americans don’t trust? Bits of cultural rot began setting it in the 1870s, when a President elected purely because he was seen as a hero and George Washington equivalent, Ulysses Grant, proved to be deeply flawed on a very human scale, and challenged to the breaking point by the complexities of running a country. Grant was admirable in many ways. He had great integrity, but he had no governing experience at all, and was sentimental, emotional, and gullible. He was succeeded by a far more qualified man, Rutherford B. Hayes, who nonetheless continued the deconstruction of the public trust by taking the office as a result of a stolen election. (He should have refused to go along with the plot, and would today be more admired as a defeated President than he is as an elected one.).
That scar on the Presidency remained. Garfield through Wilson repaired some of the deterioration of Washington’s template, but revelations of Harding’s corrupt administration after his sudden death in office (and later revelations of his pathological infidelities) injected more rot and cynicism. When Herbert Hoover, as outwardly virtuous and admirable as any President before him, fell flat on his face and was blamed for the Great Depression, national interest in character began to retreat.
FDR, an unapologetic advocate of “the ends justifies the means,” became the most popular President since Washington. Historians, Democrats, journalists and more endorsed what became Allred’s plus and minus system. Yes, perhaps Roosevelt did try to rig the Supreme Court, ignored Hitler’s persecution of Jews, imprisoned Japanese-American citizens because of their race and national origin, defied laws, showed a frightening affection for power, ignored the precedent of limiting that power to eight years, lied about his health, handed over millions of Eastern Europeans to Soviet oppression, and endangered the nation and the world by placing the job of winning the Pacific war in the hands of a man with little experience that he barely knew, Harry Truman. (FDR, the US, and the world got lucky.) All of these are just “minuses” to many on the Left. A few years ago, a historians survey chose Franklin Roosevelt as the greatest President of them all. After all, there are “so many pluses for him.”
After FDR, with a brief respite provided by Ike, who showed again how the Washington template was supposed to work, it has been straight downhill: Kennedy, all sheen, substantively inept and a sociopath; LBJ, Nixon. Ford demonstrated that there was more to being President than being a nice guy, and the backlash for Nixon, Jimmy Carter, showed that being a virtuous human being wouldn’t save a President who was wrong about so much.
By the time Ronald Reagan arrived, elections were all about ideology. Character was an afterthought.
And then came Bill Clinton.
Traditions are often built on powerful truths that become over-shadowed and ultimately obscured by the traditions that support them over time. The American tradition of insisting that aspiring Presidents of the United States be judged on their ability to live up to the standards of Washington and Lincoln was such a tradition, but the culture gradually forgot why it made sense. Thus we ended up here, where demonstrations of disqualifying conduct (and a candidate running on her feminist credentials who aided and abetted her sexual predator husband in order to advance politically is disqualifying, and the disqualification would be proclaimed, rather than denied, by feminists if feminists had sufficient integrity themselves) are treated as mere “minuses” as long as untrustworthy candidates mouth soothing partisan talking-points.
The only conceivable benefit I can see eventually coming out of this awful election would be a realization that character matters after all, and that without character in its leaders, an ethical national culture is impossible.
We knew that once.
Ethics Alarms 
thunderous applause.
“revelations of Harding’s corrupt administration after his assassination” Is there a Ethics Alarms post on his assassination that I missed? Or are you the new ghostwriter for Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Harding”?
Oops. That’s DEATH. Sorry. Writing too fast as I check out of my hotel…
I think this must be the most important essay you have written Jack. Although I disagree with you about Wilson who while supposedly being an idealist showed in the Whitehouse and endorsed “Birth of a Nation” and systematically got rid of many black citizens working for the government. Sadly, the last truly ethical President we had was probably Eisenhower and even he lied about the U-2 incident. Will great power comes the opportunity for great corruption and cynical use of the office of the Presidency.
I liked this piece. But let’s get one thing straight, the men described did not give rise to the pluses and minuses – the electorate did. The elected reacted to the changing ethos of the people.
This point – “Ethical leaders create ethical citizens and ethical cultures. The people respond by regarding aspirants to power who don’t fit the template as unfit for power regardless of what fine policies they support. Ultimately, it comes down to trust. It is foolish to trust schemers, liars and hypocrites” – cannot be supported when it is easier to trust liars, schemers, and hypocrites; especially when they have the ability to force a transfer of wealth into the electorate’s pocket.
Where in the eons of time have societies become ethical because of ethical leaders. Theoretically, Washington, et al chose a path that many thought was treasonous. What is “good” or “bad” is often determined by the majority yet is does not make it truly good or bad. One can argue that moral luck was on Washington’s side not simply a virtuous position.
If we consider the historical development of communication technology coupled with the large scale immigration waves and superimpose it over your political timeline one can say that as mass communication became more prevalent, cheaper and ultimately available to anyone with a keyboard, the capability to promise anything and everything to everyone coupled with rapidly changing ethnographic landscape created politically divergent messages. These divergent messages were and still are designed to convince a group that this candidate is better for them than the other candidate.
Candidates are merely manifestations of ourselves. The exist in their form because we create them from the darkest and greediest parts of our souls.
Chris, I disagree with your “Pogo” argument that “we have met the enemy and he is us.” It’s the kind of weird thinking that told us all we were responsible for killing JFK. It’s political consultant and media baloney. It was James Carville and Paul Begala who said people didn’t care about Bill Clinton’s misconduct, not the general populous. The political class is separate from the general populous, as are the media in NYC and Hollywood.
Were they wrong?
Jack,
You might disagree, but I tend to think of Reagan as having little EXCEPT his character. Most of his ideology was borrowed from Goldwater and other conservatives and his policy experience was limited. It was his charisma and “values” that seemed to win people over. Then again, I was a baby then, and far too much of drunk to remember anything.
-Neil
Jack,
Any thoughts on the National Review actively endorsing Clinton?
Apparently it’s only the third time in their history they’ve done so. The other two being “national emergencies” (Lincoln over McClellan – okay, that makes sense, Johnson over Goldwater – can you explain that one to me — you would know better [I liked Conscience of a Conservative but know little of the man]) and now Clinton over Trump.
What makes the story irritating is that the media is jumping all over it like some wise old soothsayer has opened their mouth to speak prophetic words. Media on media coverage is the worst.
-Neil
Ummm, that was the Atlantic, not the NR. NR is putting out a fair amount of anti-Trump stuff, but the day they endorse Clinton they might as well pack up and go home.
Oh thank God for that correction! William F Buckley would be rolling over in his grave if the NR endorsed Hillary.
Barry Goldwater constituted a national emergency? Whew. The country’s been dominated by lefties longer than I realized.
“Media on media coverage is the worst.”
No industry or group of like-minded people gives itself more awards, accolades, or fanfare than the media (and show business, which is closely enough related that I group them together).
I think it’s part hubris and part desperate need for recognition, which is probably what leads most of them to the industry to begin with.
It doesn’t matter, he won’t respond either way.
I was in a discussion recently with a friend about Jack’s age, and he summed it all up with “the nation that won WWII is gone, and it isn’t coming back.” He’s absolutely right, and I’d go a step farther and say that this nation has probably won its last war. Citizens and leaders alike have to have some sense of ethics and loyalty in order for a nation to survive, leave alone flourish, leave alone win when challenged.
Ethical rot, as emperors became tyrants like Nero or indulgent sociopaths like Caligula who ruled through intimidation and corruption, was as much responsible for the collapse of the Western Roman empire as many other factors. The same was true in the Byzantine empire, as a practical, no-nonsense attitude as opposed to the hypocritical honor of Western chivalry gave way to bullying, lying, deception, brutality, and manipulation as a way of life among the rulers. As the quality of leadership declined, so did the rate of winning against enemies, until both empires weren’t much more than their capitals and both those capitals fell.
Ethical rot, combined with a dependency on gold like a habit-forming drug, took Spain from the greatest empire of all to a joke that the US easily took the remnants of an empire from, for good or for ill, as kings and prime ministers alike became indolent and incompetent. Ethical rot doomed the USSR almost from the beginning, as a nation built on killing those who don’t agree with the ruling elite can’t survive, and it became a 70-year experiment that failed, but consumed a lot of lives.
Now the rot has reached the head here, and a majority of the US is ok with it. If you had said to me 12 years ago that homosexual marriage would be not only a nationwide, but a westwide law, that a danger bigger than al Quaeda would arise, and that Hillary would be in a position to be the LESS crazy and unethical candidate for president, I’d have told you that you were crazy. Unfortunately, with the attitude that who marries who doesn’t matter came the attitude that nothing anyone does unrelated to his office matters, which should have been clearly distinguished culturally. With the attitude that we’d overreached in Iraq came the attitude that we should just retreat and let the ME, indeed the world deal with its own issues. With the attitude that Bill Clinton was fine, as long as he did his job and was ok with abortion, came the attitude that someone like Hillary or Trump were both ok, as long as they held all the right positions.
Mark my words, Jack, the US is on its way out as a world power. When the next 9/11 comes the president won’t use it as a point to rally the nation back to something like the patriotic fervor that followed the original. The president will do the best possible job burying it, and maybe scolding the people of this nation for creating the conditions that let it happen. A nation can’t survive when its dominant political party is made up largely of people and groups who dislike the nation and what its supposed to stand for and those who do like what the nation is supposed to stand for are called five different kinds of ignorant and ten different kinds of hateful. We were almost there in the 1970s, and there is no Reagan on the horizon now. Heck, I think the current political climate might see him so character assassinated that he would never hold office.
I had to read that first sentence three times, Steve-o, wondering why younger discussing jacks age with your friend.
You were, not younger. Geez.
I wasn’t. I was talking to a friend who was born around the same time as our fearless mod.
This does beg the question of how America haters managed to take over a major political party.
Perhaps the ideology of the major political power was easily aligned to America hatred?
The long slide of the Democratic Party from the party of Jefferson and Jackson to what it has become today would fill a book. I haven’t got time to write one here and now, but I think it can be summed up as follows: For many reasons in many places the Democratic Party increasingly become the party of government, of governmental power, and of concentration of governmental power. Its base was typically made up of groups that tended to gravitate to personalities as much as to policies – unions that tended to coalesce around charismatic local organizers, communities that tended to coalesce around charismatic (and loud-mouthed) ministers and community activists, city dwellers to whom often their city was their world and their mayor was the ruler of that world, and so on. Those personalities in turn knew how to keep those groups in line – promise a lot, then walk back the promises, while threatening to kick anyone who called them out on over-promising and under-delivering out of the group. Slap on a little moral gloss by bringing in some folks who promised things that sounded good like peace, free expression, etc., and you were good to go.
In the meantime the Republican Party also buffed up with moral gloss of social morality, evangelism, patriotism, etc. (we’ll come to why that’s important in a moment)
Eventually this over-promising and under-delivering got ahead of itself, and those in charge in the Democratic Party had to look for someone to blame. Of course they blamed the Republican Party for the policies it embraced during the time it was in power. Since the Republican Party had buffed itself up as the party of patriotism, that blame often took on an anti-patriotic tint, and it was easy for the Democratic base, or at least part of it, from blacks who still felt disenfranchised a century after Reconstruction and twenty years after the Civil Rights Act, to Hispanics who came here hoping to move up the same way the Italians and Irish did a century before but found it was not as easy as it looked because circumstances had changed, to women who would never forgive the Republican party – the party of patriotism- for opposing the unfettered right to destroy a gestating human life (this is where they lost part of the Catholic vote, but Irish union bosses and the election of the Kennedys convinced a lot of Catholics to look the other way), to embrace that anti-patriotism. After all, the patriots wanted to shut them out, deny them what they thought they should have, etc., so patriotism, and patriots were a bad thing.
From there it was just down the road, across the bridge and over the hill to Black Lives Matter advocating the shooting of cops and demanding police free zones, far-left “peace advocates” calling for unilateral disarmament and near withdrawal from the world, and every other group that had a beef with the US generally using this nation for a football. Public disavowal of allegiance, like these stupid anthem protests, is just the latest symptom of this underlying issue.
Through it all Democratic party nominees managed to win high office their share of times and kept the goodies flowing for their base. I don’t think any of the current ones give a damn, nor did those who came before them on this path give one as to where it was ultimately going to lead, because when a party becomes all about getting in power and staying in power, and becomes led by those who display an unhealthy propensity to desire and use power to remake things aggressively (Wilson, FDR, Obama, Hillary), its ethical compass no longer points to the good of the nation. When that same party no longer has to pretend everyone in the nation is on the same team (as it didn’t have to once the USSR fell apart, and as it had to mute for a while after 9/11), the question of what’s good for the nation as a whole or even whether the nation itself is any good ceases to matter, as long as the party base will still keep electing their chosen nominees.
The best thing I’ve read from you. Thank you. I will share this a LOT.
I participated in Usenet discussions at the time. I was dismayed at people brushing aside the fact that Monica Lewinsky was an employee, trying to actually justify Clinton lying under oath, and attacking Ken Starr, accusing him of wasting money.
I still remember my then-boss, a stereotypical liberal Brooklyn Jew with curly hair, beady eyes and that hoarse voice that sounded like a cross between Mel Brooks and Bernie Sanders, dominating lunch conversations bashing Ken Starr and saying Clinton had more important things to do like run the nation, and in the next breath telling Monica fellatio jokes. A year and a half later after I had left, I ran into one of the other partners who actually had a brain and an ethical compass, and he told tales of excusing himself from lunch just so he didn’t have to listen to yet another lecture from the boss about how the SCOTUS stole the election from Al Gore by cheating the Jews in Florida.