A Higher Standard

What with all the conversation of late about the President and his Deputy Chief of staff I've been wondering quite a bit about our standards. My recollection is that once upon a time there was this thing that was known as "the mere appearance of impropriety." The idea was that even though nothing was proven, even without an investigation that there were positions and organizations where you could not even have the taint of "maybe" about you, and that if somehow you got in that situation you stepped down.

I can recall Senate confirmation hearings where even petty things would come up and the nominee would step aside. Someone who had hired an illegal to babysit their children, things like that.

The other day, the President said that "if someone in my administration has broken the law..." I found myself thinking "Why would they have had to break the law?" and for that matter why would they even have to be caught, and why would he have to wait for an official investigation? The guy they are looking at is on his personal staff. He can't just walk down the hall and ask him?

Didn't it used to be that someone would do something, the boss would find out, and then the transgressor would quietly step aside to avoid there even being an investigation?

Now it seems like people are just itching to step right up and say "Oh, yeah? Prove it!"

That's not very statesmanlike, not too distinguished. Actually it's sort of embarrassing.

So what happened to the higher standard? I actually believe that the crumbling foundation here did not begin with the people I've begun this looking at. Rather I think its from the people that habitually do the accusing. See my recollection is that WAY back in the day someone would have said

"Sir, you've taken our country to war without reason!"

and then the other guy would say

"Sir, you forget yourself sir, I demand an apology!"

and then if he didn't get the apology, he'd shoot the guy. Doesn't really work that way now. Now this doesn't mean that there aren't weasels in the world anymore, but really, accusations have become so cheap I think that public figures can't help but demand proof. Otherwise every elected official would have to be stepping down every day.

There is now an entire business of people who make their living spinning the facts and basically accusing their opposition of untoward things. I would have liked to have seen how Rush Limbaugh and Randi Rhodes would have faired back in the era of dueling.

Maybe we should bring back dueling?

So while we piss and moan about the secrecy and underhandedness, and mostly the boldface lying of today's public figures let's at least in some little way acknowledge that we are in part responsible. As a group we've cried wolf. The present culture of accusations has given our permission to people to ignore the mere appearance of impropriety.

Although they are taking advantage of it, we're all the ones that lowered the standard.