Ethics Newsline®

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

If memory serves, my earliest acquaintance with a grandfather clock was in a bank lobby. As my mother did business with a teller behind a high marble counter, I stared around down at knee-level, listening to the stately tick-tocking of the clock’s massive pendulum. It was the sound of confidence. We’re here to safeguard your money, it said, and nothing will break our rhythm. Grave and perpetual, it bespoke the essence of financial order.

But suppose you stood that clock in the back of a pickup and drove it pell-mell down a potholed logging road. Imagine the pendulum, slamming randomly from side to side in the pitching truck. Not only would it be useless at keeping time, it would be lucky to survive without smashing through the polished cabinet. Violent and haphazard, it would be the epitome of disarray.

Watching the markets this year, there’s little doubt which pendulum symbolizes our age. As the first quarter of 2008 closes, the swings have been extreme. Writing in the New York Times last week, Floyd Norris noted that U.S. markets posted twelve sessions this quarter in which stocks either rose or fell by more than 2 percent — “something that didn’t happen even once in 2004 or 2005.” But the biggest change — a 4.2 percent rise in the Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks on March 18, as the Federal Reserve cut interest rates — was modest compared to volatility in France and Germany, which bounced around in ranges above 6 percent. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index rose 10.7 percent on one day and dropped 8.7 percent on another, with India and China showing extreme volatility as well.

Is there an ethical issue underlying these excessive swings?

I think there is, and I think it traces back to a financial short-termism that seriously imperils the free enterprise system. This trend — the quest for immediate profit at the expense of long-term financial security — is not new. In 1936, British economist John Maynard Keynes contemplated measures to “make the purchase of an investment permanent” as a way to “force the investor to direct his mind to the long-term prospects and to those only.”

Recent critiques of short-termism have erupted on all sides of the political spectrum, with observers as different as Warren Buffett and Al Gore calling for change. And several weeks ago the Economist, contemplating Wall Street’s woes, pegged short-termism as a root cause. “Spurred by pay that was geared to short-term gains,” its editors wrote in the March 19 issue, “bankers and fund managers stand accused of pocketing bonuses with no thought for the longer-term consequences of what they were doing.”

What’s wrong with short-termism? That question underlay two studies by reputable organizations in 2006, well before the current crisis. In a report titled “Breaking the Short-Term Cycle,” the CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity and the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics called for reform of “practices involving earnings guidance, compensation, and communications to investors.” It declared that companies need to “make adjustments to their involvement in the ‘earnings guidance game’” — the practice of providing quarterly assessments of earnings prospects to Wall Street analysts, thereby encouraging investors to look only at immediate, bottom-line results rather than Keynes’s “long-term prospects.” It also called for executive compensation to be based on “long-term strategic and value-creation goals” rather than on these quarterly targets.

That same year a Conference Board report, “Revisiting Stock Market Short-Termism,” spoke presciently about today’s situation. “The pressure to meet short-term quarterly earnings numbers,” it asserted, “can cause undue market volatility.” Such whipsawing, in turn, can “cause management to lose sight of its strategic business model,” compromise global competitiveness, and fail to invest in “such critical long-term focused areas as research and development and environmental controls.”

These reports set forth the financial case against short-termism. But what about the ethical case? In themselves, neither short-term nor long-term thinking is “wrong.” In fact, situations that pit our present needs against our future obligations are so common that the phrase short-term versus long-term is used as a paradigm to describe some of humanity’s toughest right-versus-right dilemmas. And for good reason. All of us must honor the short term by spending for today’s necessities. To say, “I won’t eat today — I can do that next month,” is not an option. But neither can we say, “It’s boring to bring in the harvest — let’s just live for the moment.” There’s a moral case for both the long-term and the short-term — and frequently a need to choose between them.

But as with the other decision paradigms — individual versus community, justice versus mercy, truth versus loyalty — an excessive focus on one side over the other invites unethical behavior. In successful decision making, the two are kept roughly in balance. When one side continually drowns out the other, volatility rules and moral chaos ensues.

That’s nowhere truer than in short-term-versus-long-term dilemmas. More than the other paradigms, this one helps explain why market volatility is an ethical issue. Think of short-termism as consumption and long-term thinking as investment. Then remember that the issue driving the recent downturn — the housing market — represents something that, for most Americans, is the largest and most long-term investment they will ever make. Yet consumption — cashing in on rising markets to make immediate profits — represents one of the fastest ways to make money that most Americans have ever seen.

Does it now make sense that whatever would seek to destroy investment for the sake of consumption could be considered unethical? True, there are lots of financial causes for today’s downturn. But unless we recognize that behind them all lies the twenty-first century’s addiction to excessive short-termism, we’ll never address the ethical cause. Instead, we’ll just keep driving down that potholed road to nowhere — and wondering what all the clanging is about.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

“There are times when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters. Now is such a time for me.”

– Alphonso Jackson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, announcing his April 18 resignation on Monday. Jackson, who took the post after accompanying President Bush from Texas to DC, is under investigation by multiple agencies for multiple allegations, including steering contracts to friends, illegally influencing contracts, and taking retributive steps against the city of Philadelphia for refusing to transfer a valuable property to one of his friends, reports the Washington Post. Earlier this month at two Senate hearings, Jackson refused to answer questions about his role in the matter. President Bush accepted Jackson’s resignation, saying he still believes Jackson to be “a strong leader and a good man.”

Source: Washington Post, Mar. 31.

For more information, see: Wall Street Journal, Mar. 31 — New York Times, Mar. 31 — AP, Mar. 31 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 27, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 11, 2007.

Had Eliot Spitzer not resigned over prostitute scandal, press reports say he could have faced probe over campaign against political foe

ALBANY, N.Y.
Yet another ethics story involving disgraced New York governor Eliot Spitzer emerged from Albany last week — this time, a claim by prosecutors that if Spitzer had not resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal, he would have faced a grand jury probe over a political smear campaign.

According to the Reuters news agency, the district attorney’s office in Albany was investigating Spitzer’s role in the release of embarrassing information about Spitzer’s bitter rival, Senate Republican leader Joe Bruno.

Spitzer, a Democrat, repeatedly denied that he ordered an aide to release travel records that purported to show that Bruno misused state vehicles to transport him to Republican Party functions. But according to the Associated Press, a continuation of the probe has uncovered evidence that Spitzer indeed ordered the information released in an attempt to embarrass his rival.

The Albany Times Union reports that Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, now says Spitzer sanctioned the release of the records but did so in an outburst that left no doubt that Spitzer was seeking personal and political revenge against Bruno.

New York radio station WNYC says the district attorney has declined to prosecute Spitzer, saying that the main element of the probe was malfeasance by a public official currently in office, but Bruno asserts that the case should go to court and has called on the new governor, David Paterson, to review the incident and take “appropriate action” against Spitzer and others involved.

The probe also centered on whether Spitzer inappropriately used New York State Police personnel to gather information about Bruno’s travels.

Spitzer, who resigned on March 12, had made his political reputation as a champion of ethics who prosecuted skullduggery on Wall Street.

Sources: AP, Mar. 29 — WNYC, Mar. 29 — Albany Times Union, Mar. 29 — Reuters, Mar. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 24 — Related Newsline Commentary, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 16, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 7, 2005.

Probe focuses on internal memos, emails, and meeting minutes

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland, Canada
A lawyer for plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against a Canadian health-care agency claims that managers worried more about being sued for faulty cancer tests than about the ethics of informing patients.

The CBC reports that Ches Crosbie, the lead lawyer in a case involving Eastern Health, a government-run health conglomerate formed in 2005 from the merger of seven other health organizations, charged last week that Eastern delayed advising patients that their tests were flawed.

Internal communication showed “input from people in communications, input from lawyers, insurance companies,” Crosbie claimed, adding “What about ethics?”

“This was primarily an ethics issue,” Crosbie said, claming that a director of ethics did not become involved in the issue for another year, according to the CBC.

A public inquiry in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is examining the circumstances behind inaccurate test results given to 383 breast cancer patients and whether authorities at Eastern Health responded appropriately, reports the Toronto Star.

At issue are claims that Eastern Health knew there were problems with test results from a lab at an affiliated hospital as far back as 2003 but did not pursue the issue until a weekly newspaper published a story in 2005, according to reports from the Star and the Globe & Mail.

The Globe & Mail reports that notes, emails, and meeting minutes were entered as evidence in the inquiry. One email was from a lawyer advising the board of the lab company not to send a letter informing patients that their cancer tests were being reexamined by Mount Sinai hospital in Toronto, reports the paper.

“There is a possibility that we could be sued in a class action by those people who receive this proposed correspondence whose test results do not change,” attorney Daniel Boone wrote in an email to Eastern Health’s risk-management consultant, according to the Globe & Mail report. “Otherwise these people would not have a cause of action, so sending the letter actually exposes us to a liability which does not now exist…. I do not see how the letter advances the health care of the affected patients, and it increases our exposure to claims for damages. I would recommend against sending it.”

The National Post reports that the inquiry also is attempting to assess whether Eastern’s chairwoman was properly informed of the testing problems.

The tests in question were designed to determine the proper course of treatment for women already diagnosed with cancer.

Sources: Toronto Star, Mar. 29 — CBC, Mar. 28 — Globe & Mail, Mar. 28 — National Post, Mar. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 11.

Florida Senate passes new ethics law; Chinese press says students are not impressed with educators’ ethics; two civil engineering professors are in trouble after investing in land that was the focus of student research; Maryland principal is criticized for buying a golf cart to help him get around sprawling new campus

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics issues related to education in schools and colleges were the topic of various reports last week. Among them:

• The Florida State Senate last week unanimously approved an ethics bill cracking down on teacher abuses. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the measure would prohibit paying retirement benefits to teachers found guilty of committing certain felonies against minors and would require the state to help public and private schools develop codes of ethics for educators. The measure now moves to Florida’s House. A bill passed earlier this month in the Florida Senate urged the U.S. Congress to establish national ethics standards for teachers and to set up a clearinghouse to help states report and share information about educator misconduct.
• An online survey shows that more than three-quarters of Chinese youth say the ethics standards of their professors are declining, reports the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. In addition to worries about standard issues such as plagiarism and research integrity, survey respondents complained about professors cursing in their blogs — currently a controversial topic on the mainland, according to the report.
• The University of Texas at San Antonio has suspended two tenured civil engineering professors after the professors bought a parcel of land that was the subject of surveys by their students, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. A probe had determined that the professors, Chia Shun Shih and Alberto Arroyo, violated the university’s ethics policy when they purchased the property, according to reports from the Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.
• A high school principal in Maryland is at the center of an ethics controversy after he purchased a golf cart to help him get around his sprawling campus. The Washington Post reports that principal Moreno Carrasco said the golf cart primarily would be used to supervise outdoor athletic events. He would not say how much the vehicle cost, although the Post notes that new golf carts typically cost from $5,000 to $10,000. While critics argue that the expense is inappropriate at a time when the district is facing a tax shortfall, others point out that the campus is huge, with a central building as long as two football fields.

Sources: Washington Post, Mar. 29 — Xinhua, Mar. 28 — Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Mar. 28 — Chronicle of Higher Education, Mar. 21 — San Antonio Express-News, Mar. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 18 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 31, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 6, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 11, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 16, 2007.

At center of controversy is emerging ethics issue of Net neutrality

SAN FRANCISCO
Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest residential Internet service provider, last week reversed its denials and admitted that it has been blocking some Internet traffic, promising to revamp its approach to managing Web traffic after a series of press reports and public inquiries challenged the ethics of its behavior.

Comcast was under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and public interest groups after it was disclosed that it was blocking some Internet traffic of customers who used certain file-sharing software programs, the New York Times reported. The Company previously had denied blocking the traffic.

The issue came to light after an Associated Press investigation, which found that Comcast was surreptitiously blocking Internet usage via some popular file-sharing programs, a revelation that BusinessWeek characterizes as a “major public relations debacle.”

The report led not only to outrage among customers, BusinessWeek notes, but also prompted an FCC threat to consider regulations on network management techniques.

A report from the San Francisco Chronicle says that Comcast has agreed to end its practice of blocking traffic from customers using certain programs on peer-to-per networks and will work with software manufacturers to find ways to move files efficiently.

The agreement announced by Comcast still involves the potential slowing of Internet connections of heavy bandwidth users during peak hours, though the slowing will not be based on the particular programs used, reports the London-based Independent, leading some critics to say that regulation is still necessary in order to protect Net neutrality.

The ethics issue at hand is the quarrel between those who favor Net neutrality versus proponents of “bandwidth shaping.”

Net neutrality advocates maintain that all traffic should be treated equally and warn that if telecommunication and cable companies are able to move certain messages at different speeds, it will lead to a system where fast and reliable service is only available to those who pay a premium for it.

Backers of bandwidth shaping, which involves moving different types of traffic at varying rates and through varying channels, claim that bandwidth hogs, especially those who share audio and video files online, choke traffic for the majority of users.

Privacy advocates argue that it is unethical for Internet service providers to sidetrack selected transmissions because they have no right to digitally inspect the content in order to determine whether it should be put on the fast or slow track.

Sources: Guardian, Mar. 29 — New York Times, Mar. 28 — BusinessWeek, Mar. 28 –San Francisco Chronicle, Mar. 27.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 24 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Oct. 22, 2007 — Related Newsline story, June 26, 2006.

Suit had been one factor in recent controversy surrounding revision of school textbooks that deleted reference to forced mass suicides

OSAKA
In Japan, where feelings about the nation’s actions during World War II still run deep, a libel suit over a claim that the military was involved in mass suicides in Okinawa was dismissed last week.

A court in Osaka dismissed the suit brought against Nobel Prize-winning writer Kenzaburo Oe, 91, and his publisher over statements in his book that military officers ordered civilians in Okinawa to commit mass suicide, reports the Tokyo-based Mainichi Daily News.

The court rejected a $200,000 suit filed by a 91-year-old war veteran and another veteran’s surviving relatives who claimed there was no evidence of the military’s involvement and that the suicides were voluntary, the International Herald Tribune reported.

According to Bloomberg, the judge hearing the case ruled that Oe had “reasonable data and grounds” for the assertion.

In Oe’s 1970 essay, “Okinawa Notes,” he claimed that Japanese soldiers forced the Okinawans to kill themselves instead of surrendering to Allied troops.

“Okinawa Notes” had a wide legal and ethical impact throughout Japan, notes the Times of London, with the lawsuit serving as one basis for the government’s decision last year to change public-school textbooks to delete reference to military-forced suicides.

Sources: International Herald Tribune, Mar. 28 — Mainichi Daily News, Mar. 28 — Times of London, Mar. 28 — Bloomberg, Mar. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Dec. 31, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 18, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 5, 2006 — Related Newsline story, June 19, 2006 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 17, 2006.

Items range from the indictment of Puerto Rico’s governor to the controversy over a new law in Oregon that requires extensive financial disclosure for volunteers on small-town planning boards

VARIOUS DATELINES
Ethics issues involving government were reported by news media on several continents last week. Among the stories:

• Puerto Rico’s governor, Anibal Acevedo Vila, last week was charged with 19 corruption counts stemming from a campaign finance scandal, the Agence France-Presse reports. He pleaded not guilty and was released without posting bail, according to CNN. Prosecutors allege that the governor and other codefendants accepted illegal and unreported contributions, funneled through false sources, to pay off campaign debts.
• An Indonesian court exonerated the nation’s former president, the late Haji Mohammed Suharto, and his heirs, of liability in a civil corruption case alleging that a charitable foundation run by Suharto had stolen state funds. The Jurist, an online journal from the University of Pittsburgh Law School, reports that the court ruled that the foundation’s board of directors, not Suharto, had been responsible for any misuse of funds. The court ordered the foundation to repay $110 million to the government.
• Nigeria’s anticorruption czar is about to lose his job, according to a report from ABC News. The impending sacking of Nuhu Ribadu, who has become popularly known as the Elliot Ness of Nigeria, comes in the midst of his investigation of the former Nigerian vice-president and several of the nation’s governors. Newly elected Nigerian president Umaru Yar’Adua already has removed Ribadu from office on a temporary basis by sending him on a yearlong training program. Ribadu has become well-known in Nigeria not only because of his relentless antigraft prosecutions, but also because he publicly blamed corruption for Nigeria’s troubled economy, reports ABC.
• Oregon State recently adopted a tough new ethics law, but small towns are finding their ranks of volunteers depleted because of its strict financial disclosure provisions. The Portland Oregonian reports that the latest venue for controversy is the small city of Maupin, where four of the seven members of the planning commission quit rather than submit a statement of their economic interests to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. Earlier this month, the entire planning commission for the city of Elgin resigned for the same reason. The Oregonian notes that the new law requires officeholders, even volunteers, to identify their sources of income, property holdings, certain types of debt, and investments. The mayor of Maupin said the new rules are a “slap in the face” to the integrity of volunteers.

Sources: AFP, Mar. 28 — CNN, Mar. 28 — Jurist, Mar. 28 — ABC, Mar. 28 — Portland Oregonian, Mar. 27.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 18 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 18 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 11.

Not surprisingly, some of those being monitored say there’s an ethics issue

NEW YORK and LIVERPOOL, U.K.
Tracking technologies can produce a variety of practical benefits, but as reported in several stories last week from the world press, they also carry some ethical baggage:

• High-tech fingerprint scanners may be installed at the doors of schools in Liverpool, England, enabling only teachers, pupils, and support staff to enter the buildings. But the Liverpool Echo reports that the proposal is controversial, with some critics saying that the technique, which could be expanded to monitor attendance, is an unacceptable invasion of privacy and would put fingerprints in a database that could be misused in the future.
• Punching the time clock is going high-tech at a variety of businesses, reports Scientific American, but the advancing technology is intersecting with ethical controversy. The newest wrinkle in monitoring employee movement and attendance is the biometric scanner, which gathers and stores information about body parts such as fingers, palms, and eyes, and can be used to monitor access as well as employees’ arrival and departure times. Many employees are beginning to object, according to the report, not only on the ground that such systems are intrusive, but that they are potential germ spreaders because so many people will be forced to stick their hands in the devices.
• Devices to electronically monitor young drivers are a hit with parents and insurance companies, reports the Wall Street Journal, but are receiving a lukewarm reception from teens. One system profiled by the Journal uses video cameras to monitor the inside of a car as well as the view through the windshield. Whenever the car makes an erratic move, the camera transmits a digital recording to a central monitoring station, where the movement is analyzed and a report emailed to parents. A variety of other systems use recording devices or GPS trackers to monitor the movement and speed of young drivers. Not surprisingly, teens often protest the intrusion, and the Journal notes that the head of one of the featured firms acknowledges that almost all of his systems are installed without the teen’s knowledge.

Sources: Wall Street Journal, Mar. 28 — Scientific American, Mar. 28 — Liverpool Echo, Mar. 24.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 24 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 28 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 7.

Three in four now believe U.S. is in a recession

From Reuters/Zogby:

“With U.S. recession fears hitting new highs, the overall mood of Americans has taken a sharp turn for the worse, a new Reuters/Zogby poll shows. The Reuters/Zogby Index, which measures American confidence, has fallen to a new low of 87.7 from 99.3 last month, when the index boasted its highest rating since the baseline rating of 100 for the index was established in August.

“The report of public confidence in the economy and their nation comes after several days of dramatic economic headlines, but fieldwork for the survey was actually completed just as news was breaking Friday about the collapse of investment house Bear Stearns and the full percent cut of a key interest rate by the Federal Reserve — a quarter-point on Sunday and another three-quarters of a percent on Tuesday.

“The Reuters/Zogby index is comprised of 10 poll questions that gauge perceptions of the state of the country and the economy. Every one of the 10 data points declined in March compared to a month ago.

“Three in four Americans — 74% — believe the U.S. economy is currently in a recession, a sharp increase from the 54% surveyed last month who believed a recession could arrive sometime in the next year. Worries about the state of the nation’s economy may also be taking a toll on how Americans view their own economic circumstances — more than half (54%) give their personal financial situation a negative rating, up from 44% who said the same in last month’s survey….

“Likely voters are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the performance of U.S. economic policy, with 87% who rate it negatively — up 10 points from the 77% who said the same in February — with half (50%) who now rate the nation’s economic policy as ‘poor.’ Discontent over the nation’s economic policy cuts across party lines….

“Nearly three in four are also pessimistic about the overall direction the U.S. is headed — 73% believe the country is on the wrong track, up from 62% who said the same last month. Independents are most likely to feel this way (85%), but most Democrats (77%) and Republicans (60%) also believe the U.S. is heading in the wrong direction.

“The gains in job approval ratings made by President George W. Bush and Congress over the past few months from their all-time lows last year have reversed course in this latest poll. Approval ratings for the President stand at just 26% this month, down from 34% who gave him positive job approval marks in February. Bush has lost ground across the political spectrum, including among likely voters in his own party….

“Likely voters are even more dissatisfied with the job performance of Congress — job approval ratings for Congress have fallen to just 13%, down from 17% who gave Congress a positive rating last month….”

For the full press release, Mar. 19, click here.

“There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.”

– James Russell Lowell (U.S. writer, diplomat, and abolitionist, 1819-1891)

On Thursday, May 1, the Institute for Global Ethics will be presenting an Ethical Fitness® Seminar in Seattle, Washington. Facilitated by Institute founder Rushworth M. Kidder, this daylong seminar is an interactive, small-group immersion course, based on his seminal book, How Good People Make Tough Choices. The course helps participants resolve the ethics issues they face daily, both at work and at home. At the end of the course, participants will learn to:

• Become ethically aware by first exploring and evaluating the current ethical climate in the United States and the world

• Define values important to themselves and their group members by identifying, testing, and ranking a set of global values

• Analyze ethics using real-life, right-versus-right stories

• Resolve dilemmas using practical principles that can be applied to all areas of everyday life

The total cost for the course, including a continental breakfast and lunch, is $425. To register or for more information, please contact John Ragozzine or call 1-800-729-2615.

For more information, see this week’s Research Report.

by Rushworth M. Kidder

Presidential contender Barack Obama’s March 18 speech on race was widely applauded as one of the most compelling speeches of our time. But why? What made it so?

True, he spoke with authority on a much-avoided topic. He dignified his audience’s intelligence, addressing their thinking rather than manipulating their emotions. He confronted a serious challenge without ducking or spinning. And he lifted the discourse from the merely defensive to the genuinely philosophical. But lots of politicians do that, at least from time to time. Obama’s speech seemed a cut above the rest. Why?

The answer, I think, lies in a kind of coherence that was musical in its impact. In an almost symphonic way, he interwove three strands of oratorical skill — a rhetorical structure, a moral theme, and a narrative conviction — into an integrated whole.

Rhetorical structure. This speech moved through three broad topics: an exposition of his own story and his relationship to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an analysis of that relationship as an illustration of a racial divisiveness that “this nation cannot afford to ignore,” and a proposal for addressing that divisiveness by finding the “common stake we all have in one another.” Throughout this architecture ran a motif of balanced, two-part statements and counterstatements that included:

• A condemnation of Rev. Wright’s “distorted view of this country,” followed by an explanation of why he cannot utterly disown him
• A discussion of the buried anger in the black community, matched by a discussion of white anger
• His call for blacks to “squarely [face] our own complicity in our condition,” balanced by a call for some whites to stop “dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice … as mere political correctness”
• A choice between an old “politics that breeds division” and a new politics of hope

This duality also showed up in numerous well-balanced sentences, as when he spoke of the gap between “the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time,” the fact that we have “different stories, but we hold common hopes,” and the need to “embrace the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past.” These doublets may be nearly invisible, but they build verbal intensity just as surely as symphonic structure intensifies musical notes until, without quite knowing why, we feel moved.

Moral theme. Within this architecture, two related themes laced themselves together. The first centered on the word perfect, a note he struck eleven times from his very first sentence (”a more perfect union”) to his penultimate word (”that is where perfection begins”). But perfection is a daring theme in an age of ethical relativism. It opens him to the sneers of cynics, who contemptuously dismiss perfection as a silly impossibility. Yet for Obama to have called for anything less would have undercut the idealism of his campaign. His solution? Invoke the powerful but grammatically suspect constitutional phrase “more perfect.” Setting aside the problem of how anything perfect can become even more so, Obama used that phrase to focus on progress toward perfection rather than on demands for its absolute state. His variations on this theme touched on Rev. Wright (”as imperfect as he may be”) and included a seemingly casual but artfully self-deprecating comment on himself (”a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”)

The second theme, expressed as hope, began early and built to a crescendo. As with perfection, this word also risked the cynics’ wrath. Yet a focus on a hopeful future was crucial to his message. In a moment of real insight, he noted that Rev. Wright’s “profound mistake” was that “he spoke as if our society was static,” without any progress upon which to found a sense of hope. Without hope — Obama’s signature word — nothing can be made “more perfect.” Yet while “this union may never be perfect,” he declared, “generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.” Again, the thematic interplay of perfection and hope was all the more powerful for being only semi-recognized by his listeners.

Narrative conviction. In a rich and many-layered moment, Obama didn’t just tell the story of his formative experience in Rev. Wright’s church. Instead, he quoted a paragraph from his earlier book about how the church used Biblical stories to explain the moral story of the black experience. If that story-within-story-within-story seems complex, the result was a powerfully simple statement of how “our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal” as “the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, [and] Ezekiel’s field of dry bones.” In the end, this was a story about the importance of stories in helping us make meaning out of moral complexity. Not accidentally, then, his speech ended with a story. It was about Ashley, a young white campaign organizer, and an elderly black man in Florence, South Carolina, whose simple comment — “I’m here because of Ashley” — was layered with multiple meanings.

For most politicians, such stories are for adornment, amplifying the logic of the speech. For Obama, by contrast, logic is the setting for gem-like narratives. Like the Biblical stories in black churches, his stories don’t simply illustrate his point. They are his point. And that, I think, helps explain Obama’s appeal. Most politicians, relying on the principles of sociology and political science, start with facts or polling data and, if needed, round out their talks with what they sometimes see as “mere” anecdotes. Obama, relying on the traditions of literature and the humanities, understands that symbolic narrative can often convey a moral message better than data-driven discourse.

Which explains why the Democratic primary features two such different candidates. On one side of the party’s individual-versus-community divide are those who, seeing sociologically, build science-like constructs in which the community trumps the individual. On the other side are those who, seeing narratively, use the literary imagination to focus more on the lives of real people — flawed, imperfect, but authentic — than the group. If Obama’s speech had an unfamiliar but welcome resonance, it was because he spoke to an almost-forgotten hunger in us all for the symphonic, elevating, and deeply moral stories of real, recognizable people. Will that win nominations? Who knows. But it certainly makes good speeches.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

Questions or comments? Write to newsline@globalethics.org.

Rushworth Kidder’s commentary on the fall of former New York governor Eliot Spitzer prompted several responses from readers. Among the comments:

Thank you so much for your piece on Spitzer. It has done much to calm the storm of emotions that has gripped me since these awful revelations.

In my professional life, I knew this man and some of his best and most ethically minded colleagues as we worked together on matters of legal and ethical abuse in the insurance industry on both sides of the border.

The revelation of his duplicity was like a blow to the ethical foundations on which I thought we had all been basing our work all those years ago, several times to our personal danger. Despite being long retired, I felt vulnerable and sick at the thought that the man whom I looked on as the rock and guardian of our efforts might well have been as useless as a wet sheet in a storm.

Reading and re-reading your piece has helped me to regain some sense of hope….

– Antony Cunningham
Toronto, Canada

* * *

The commentary on Eliot Spitzer was 100 percent on target, concise, and well written. Having recently moved into the DC area, I have become increasing aware of the phony image that politicians veneer themselves with, including the abuse of the word “friend,” until such terms have no real meaning in the political environment. We tend to elect the veneer, without knowing what is really behind it.

– Erick Reynolds
Frederick, MD

– Compiled by Ethics Newsline® editor Carl Hausman

“Under reasonable scenarios, assuming we don’t pull out rapidly, we may only be halfway through. Even in direct budgetary costs, it’s quite easy to get up on the order of $1 trillion for Iraq alone.”

– Steven Koziak, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a nonpartisan research group, speaking to the New York Times about the cost of the Iraq war. As the U.S. engagement in Iraq marks its five-year anniversary, the Times examines a range of views on why most estimates of the war’s cost were vastly wrong, how much the entanglement ultimately may cost, and the motives of those providing the estimates.

Source: New York Times, Mar. 19.

Increasingly, sites with global reach find themselves in a profit-versus-responsibility dilemma

BEIJING
Events involving China last week raised ethics issues involving not only the nation’s treatment of Tibetan separatist protestors, but also its policies toward new-media outlets that may spread information about the actions of dissidents.

The BBC reports that after several days of denials, China admitted that anti-Beijing protests have spread beyond the Tibetan Autonomous Region, with heavy damage to government buildings during riots in Sichuan province.

BBC reports indicate that hundreds of troop carriers have been seen pouring into Tibetan areas, and that Tibetan exiles claim shots have been fired at monks and other protestors.

State media has blamed the dissidents and labeled some of the protestors as “mobsters,” according to the BBC.

The state-run Chinese Xinhua news service on Saturday ran a story characterizing the protests as “sabotage” led by the “Dalai Lama clique” and said that various Chinese communities in foreign nations have condemned the protests.

Authorities have placed limits on Western reporters, with a German journalist telling the BBC that he was the last foreign reporter forced out of the city of Lhasa.

But the technological evolution of the media has changed the parameters of old-style press controls, according to an analysis from the Agence France-Presse. China has had mixed results from its dictum that websites must stop posting audio-visual content, a move believed to be largely an effort to censor news about the unrest in Tibet.

The Chinese government initially imposed the audio-visual ban on all websites, but after harsh criticism from abroad, backed off and said private firms that were in business before the imposition of the rule and “in good standing” with the government could continue to offer such content, subject to censorship, according to reports from the AFP and the London-based Guardian.

According to the Wall Street Journal, access to the video site YouTube was shut down inside China after the site was flooded with graphic images from the Tibet demonstrations.

The Journal piece notes that the China confrontation is the latest in a string of incidents that is forcing YouTube, which is owned by Google, to balance ethical and economic considerations that are the inevitable consequences of its increasingly global reach.

“This is a situation that the company and all Internet companies will be facing in many countries with all types of political systems as the Internet matures and millions more people log on,” Robert Boorstin, Google’s director of policy communications in Washington, told the Journal. “At all times, our goal is to maximize the amount of information available to citizens around the world.”

Google faced its own censorship dilemma when it opened a search engine in China, reports the Journal, eventually agreeing to government censorship under the theory that some information flow was better than none at all.

Congress held hearings last year into the subject, examining how U.S. firms have helped the Chinese government censor content and identify pro-democracy Web users it wants to arrest.

Sources: Xinhua, Mar. 22 — Wall Street Journal, Mar. 21 — Guardian, Mar. 21 — BBC, Mar. 21 — AFP, Mar. 21.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007.

In wake of departure of predecessor amid prostitution scandal, David Paterson puts his past on display, but says it will not affect his ability to lead

ALBANY
New York State’s increasingly bizarre political scene again featured high moral drama last week, as new governor David Paterson, giving a speech one day after taking over the office vacated by the disgraced Eliot Spitzer, admitted that he had affairs with several women.

But Paterson said the affairs did not affect his ability to lead, the Associated Press reports.

Newsday notes that Paterson’s surprise announcement about his infidelities was a strategic attempt to seize control of a narrative that otherwise might spin out of control and hurt him.

“The core reason for coming forward is you are able to define what the story is,” Dan Keeny, a public relations consultant who specializes in damage control, told Newsday. “You put the frame around the picture.”

Both Paterson and his wife acknowledged having extramarital affairs during their 15-year marriage.

While Paterson’s poll numbers dipped after the revelation, he has retained his overall popularity, according to the New York Post. Seventy-five percent of voters surveyed by Quinnipiac University said the incoming governor will lead effectively, with 67 percent saying he will restore trust in government.

According to the New York Daily News, poll numbers remained solidly in condemnation of Spitzer, who resigned after being linked to a high-priced prostitution ring: 81 percent said resignation was the correct option, with 48 percent saying Spitzer should be charged with a crime.

In related news, the U.S. Department of Justice, which nailed Spitzer via some of its most intrusive investigative tactics, last week defended its aggressiveness.

The scale of the probe, which involved monitoring phone calls, tailing the now-ex-governor, and sifting through his financial records, was an apparent departure for Justice, which rarely pursues prostitution rings unless there are extraordinary circumstances involved, such as child exploitation or vast amounts of money, notes the New York Times.

Government investigators told the Times that their pursuit of the case was justified because it involved the possibility of wrongdoing by New York’s highest elected official, who also had served the former top prosecutor for the state.

Justice officials who spoke to the Times anonymously said they had no choice but to investigate Spitzer after reports of suspicious bank activity had been filed with the Treasury Department. The unidentified investigators said the banking reports suggested that various machinations had been used to try to keep anyone from noticing transfers of his own money, which could have been symptomatic of bribery or extortion.

Sources: New York Times, Mar. 21 — New York Post, Mar. 21 — Daily News, Mar. 20 — AP, Mar. 19 — Newsday, Mar. 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline Commentary, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 4, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 16, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 1, 2005.

U.S. State Department probes computer breach of presidential candidates’ passport files; a story on a French website leads that nation’s first lady to castigate the media; and a New York State assemblyman makes waves in the online advertising industry with a bill requiring explicit consent before a surfer’s habits are tracked

VARIOUS DATELINES
Privacy issues were raised in several stories dealing with the intersection of technology, media, and public figures last week. Among the items:

• The U.S. Department of State is investigating who snooped into the passport files of the three leading presidential candidates. Newsweek reports that sources close to the probe say two private contracting firms were involved in a series of breaches — three unauthorized peeks at Barack Obama’s file, and one each at Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s. Electronic passport files typically contain a scan of the paper application form as well as birth dates, Social Security numbers, family information, and in some cases information on travel destinations, according to Newsweek. It is unclear whether such confidential information could have any value in the realm of political dirty tricks, and investigators say misguided curiosity could have triggered the unauthorized entries into the databases, which were detected by security software.
• The website of a popular French magazine was the focus of an ethical and legal controversy involving a gossipy story about French president Nicolas Sarkozy. UPI reports that Sarkozy last week finally dropped a lawsuit against the publication Nouvel Observateur, which claimed that Sarkozy had sent his former wife a text message offering to take her back. The legal action was dropped after the reporter recanted and apologized, but Sarkozy’s new wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was not appeased, unleashing a blistering critique of the media, reports the Reuters news agency. The current French first lady blasted the media in an editorial in a national newspaper: “What is dishonest and worrying about this whole incident is that at no moment was the ‘information’ checked, corroborated, or confirmed…. If rumor now serves as information, if fantasy fuels a scoop, where will we end up? If major newspapers fail to sift out the gossip from the facts, who will?”
• In a measure that many industry observers say could have national implications, a New York State assemblyman is sponsoring a bill that would ban online advertisers from tracking a user’s surfing history in order to serve up targeted ads. PC World reports that assemblyman Richard Brodksy’s proposal would require companies such as AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo to get a surfer’s explicit permission before tracking Web movements. According to PC World, the measure, if enacted, would have a broad impact on all online advertisers because there would be no other way to avoid the wrath of New York authorities than to comply with the state’s laws, regardless of the origin of the ad.

Sources: Newsweek, Mar. 21 — Reuters, Mar. 21 — UPI, Mar. 19 — PC World, Mar. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 25 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 28.