Loyalty to Presidents is Overrated -- Be Loyal to the People, Please
On CNN, sane talk radio host and erstwhile Culture11 Chairman of the Board Bill Bennett says this about Matt Latimer’s book:
Talk about way over your head. He’s way over [his] head. That’s the best job he’ll have ever. The guy is a worm. He’s a worm. He belongs under a rock next to Scott McClellan. This is so disgusting. I don’t know if Don Rumsfeld knows what he’s getting. I have been critical of the Bush administration, but I did not work for the George W. Bush administration. This kind of disloyalty is — you know, give me ten ultra liberal Paul Begalas for his integrity. [Latimer] needs to read his Dante. He probably hasn’t read “The Inferno.” The lowest circle of hell are for people who are disloyal in the way this guy is disloyal and the very lowest point Satan chews on their bodies. Maybe Scott McClellan will chew on this guy’s leg in the after life. So creepy and so disgusting. Why waste 15 minutes on this guy?
I’ve heard this argument before, and I never understand it. In an ideal world, presidents would hire the most qualified people to work in the West Wing the job wouldn’t be a favor that confers an obligation of future loyalty, but a meritocratic appointment.
Of course, insofar as an administration must work as a team toward common ends, its employees should be loyal so long as they are working under the president. But once their job ends — and especially once the president leaves office — maintaining loyalty for its own sake does nothing for the country, whereas forthrightly giving a behind-the-scenes account serves two ends: 1) it affords history a fuller picture of a president’s tenure; 2) it reveals mistakes and shortcomings that can be avoided by future administrations that learn from the past. Why would anyone value the loyalty that is supposedly owed a former boss over those significant public goods?
Would Mr. Bennett really want one of President Obama’s aids to forgo writing a memoir that sheds light on mistakes made by the present administration? I can’t imagine he would, nor do I believe that Mr. Bennett believes, as a general proposition, that those who write critical books about administrations wherein they served are bound for the lowest circles of hell. I certainly don’t think, for example, that my former Culture11 boss David Kuo is hell-bound for penning Tempting Faith, and I can’t believe Mr. Bennett does either, since few chairmen of boards willingly appoint CEOs who they regard as Satan’s future companions.
Whether we’re talking about Mr. Kuo, Mr. Latimer, Mr. Safire, Mr. McClellan, or some Obama Administration official whose name we don’t yet know, Peggy Noonan offers appropriate counsel:
Leave him alone. He wrote a book. It is true or untrue, accurately reported or not. If not, this will no doubt be revealed. It is honestly meant and presented, or not. Look to the assertions, argue them, weigh and ponder.
That’s my first thought. My second goes back to something William Safire, himself a memoirist of the Nixon years, said to me, a future memoirist of the Reagan years: “The one thing history needs more of is first-person testimony.” History needs data, detail, portraits, information; it needs eyewitness. “I was there, this is what I saw.” History will sift through, consider and try in its own way to produce something approximating truth.
In that sense one should always say of memoirs of those who hold or have held power: More, please.
My thoughts on Latimer and his book are ambivalent. However, in response to Conor’s question, I have two points:
1. We expect the President to deal with very serious matters on a more or less constant basis. Furthermore, we want the president to have frank and unhesitant staff and advisors with whom the president can openly discuss his thoughts. I think we can all agree that we would want such open conversation between advisors and the president so that he can make the best, well-informed decision — even if people are sometimes revealed to have stupid ideas or make unfortunate comments.
2. To the extent that having to worry about everyone in the room — including less-critical white house staff like junior speechwriters — and their future armchair quarterbacking inhibits open discussions between the president and his advisors, books like Latimer’s are not an unqualified good. More to the point, I think it is a reasonable explanation for why people familiar with the White House and how it works believe that loyalty and discretion are values we should all support.
We have made a similar trade-off in all sorts of contexts. I am most familiar with the attorney-client relationship. Despite the fact that the privilege sometimes prevents access to statements that would shed light on the truth, we as a society have determined that our interest in having clients and lawyers be able to communicate without inhibition outweighs the costs. In the end — so the justification goes — our justice system is more effective with the attorney-client privilege than without it.
I think there are relevant analogies here.
— Jay Daniel · Sep 24, 07:49 PM · #
Bennett believes he’s a member of a meritocratic aristocracy, so he naturally subscribes to old world values like loyalty to one’s liege lord. I also think political figures like Bennett understand fully just how screwed up and predatory they’ve allowed the public sphere to become, but they rely on beltway concepts of privacy to protect themselves from it.
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 24, 07:52 PM · #
Wow….Conor gives his old Culture 11 boss a beatdown.
I am impressed.
— matoko_chan · Sep 24, 11:08 PM · #
Anyone besides me ever catch the animated version of Bennie’s “Book of Virtues” project. Treacley, but effective none the less. Maybe Bill’s got spider’s asses at the end of his digits.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 25, 12:01 AM · #
A quote:
A sophisticated reader knows that Latimer is sitting On The Wool Sack, but the much, much more complicated wool sack of Media Age sparkle, please burn.
Much of what he says I trust.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 25, 03:53 AM · #
So you’re saying Bill Bennett is a partisan hack, who has one set of morals for those who support his positions, and another for those who he disagrees with? I concur, and I know who gets MY vote for “creepy and disgusting”.
— tgb1000 · Sep 25, 04:26 PM · #
He’s a pundit— of course he fears and despises the idea of accountability.
See Glenn Greenwald on David Brooks today to help understand why:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/25/brooks/index.html
— the commentariat you wish you had · Sep 25, 04:43 PM · #
I think the difference comes when there is an outright truth to be told that is separate from simply being damaging and slandering the former boss out of bitterness at some slight. Some of what Latimer writes is justifiable, and some – just gossip. It’s one thing to be Dick Morris (I have night terrors about having to be that scumbag) and capitalize on your “expertise” by exploiting your former employers directly – “even the Democrat who worked for the Clintons has doubts!” it’s quite another to be a whistle blower on actual issues and information.
— Byrd · Sep 25, 04:55 PM · #
squawking about loyalty is the mark of whose only relationship to morality is relational. bennet and the people who think like him swim in the otherwise completely amoral quid-pro-quo world of elite business and politics. deep down, they know they’re all vile scumbags, so they hold on to their friendships and relationships with other vile scumbags as some sort of proof that they have even the slightest moral fiber. throw in the death of meritocracy, which means everyone is where they are because of whose ass they kissed, and you emerge with loyalty as the in-side-the-Beltway moral principle.
— nillionaire · Sep 25, 05:55 PM · #
As it becomes more evident that Bush was grossly inadequate for the job, the question arises why more people didn’t speak out, as one calamity after another befell the nation.
If Bill Bennett has such valuable insights into how people and politics work, then why wasn’t he able to discern that Bush had no business running the country? Bush was SO bad, that an accurate appraisal of Bush is a condemnation of those who sat by quietly, or who often cheered while the parade of horribles was unfolding.
— Nick · Sep 25, 06:22 PM · #
I think Jay Daniel’s argument is the usual one: anything that increases fear of future, post-Administration publication will impair the President’s ability to get good advice. This argument presumably intends that the secrecy surrounding any ex-President’s actions should be complete enough & permanent enough to prevent such impairment. This could in principle require perfectly complete & eternal secrecy.
— K · Sep 25, 06:32 PM · #
K —
I don’t think your second and third statement’s necessarily follow from my argument. Maybe by analogizing to the attorney-client relationship, I implied “complete & eternal secrecy.” But my intention was only to rebut Conor’s argument; the analogy was intended to show that we can have a legitimate interest in having a norm of loyalty and discretion in the White House. I think it can be outweighed by other factors — for example, disclosing what you reasonably believe to be criminal or unconstitutional activity. Most norms work that way. But maybe it shouldn’t be outweighed by factors such as: personal distate, legitimate policy disagreements, or greed.
— Jay Daniel · Sep 25, 08:03 PM · #
“I’ve heard this argument before, and I never understand it.”
Oh come on. This is just a particular aspect of party uber alles. We used to use a different name for this crowd, but now we just call them republicans.
— km · Sep 25, 08:22 PM · #
“Most norms work that way.”
Why should the norm of loyalty be treated any differently than the other social norms that have gone straight to hell? Remember Bush getting caught at an open mic calling a reporter a “major league asshole”? Not only did Bush never apologize for that, but his refusal to do so was snickeringly cheered on by too many conservatives. And, of course, there’s Cheney’s famous “fuck you” that he himself has now publicly chortled over. I don’t recall Bill Bennett says anything about that.
The break down in social norms is bad. What’s worse, however, is when only certain social norms are rigidly adhered to for the benefit of the powerful.
Mike
— MBunge · Sep 25, 08:22 PM · #