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

by Rushworth M. Kidder

How will the next president respond to a crisis?

For voters who care about moral responsibility in a complex world, there are few more important questions. But the answers, during an ordinary campaign season, usually are only speculative responses to hypothetical what ifs. Candidates usually don’t have to respond to real crises.

Last week that changed. With the challenge to financial markets and the ensuing interventions by the federal government, voters got to watch how the presidential and vice presidential candidates responded to a critical turn of events unfolding in real time. In other words, we got to see whether the candidates looked and acted presidential.

The results were disappointing. It’s now widely felt that none of them rose to the occasion — at least not until late in the week after the moment had passed. Given the chance to assert a commanding national presence, they punted. Why? Was the crisis too big, such that they didn’t want to risk interfering with the actual crisis managers? Did they feel it was inappropriate for a campaign to engage in real-time decision making? Were their staffs buffaloed because they lacked the knowledge that sitting presidents have and therefore were unable to formulate a presidential-sounding position? Or — sober thought — is none of the four capable of looking and acting presidential in a crisis?

I’d answer no on all counts. Their failure isn’t personal to them. It reveals a basic flaw in our campaign system, which is that the qualities needed to get elected in the United States are fundamentally different from the qualities needed to govern the United States once in office.

We’re talking qualities, not experience. We’ve known for years that the experiences are substantially different: No one believes that a suitable inhabitant of the Oval Office is required to know how to eat vulcanized chicken in shirtsleeves under a campaign tent. What’s now becoming clear is that the qualities — the attributes, characteristics, and habits of mind — also are entirely different:

• Successful campaigns are about naked partisanship and polarization, where candidates take every opportunity to snap back at their opponents. Successful administrations are about unification and coalition building, where the president forges compromise and compels unlikely bedfellows to cooperate.
• Paradoxically, however, successful campaigns are about appeasement, as candidates constantly repackage themselves to appeal to warring camps within their own parties. Successful administrations are about consistent visions of statecraft — predictable, unwavering in their core principles, and willing to soldier on despite being disliked.
• As part of their polarizing, successful campaigns routinely redefine tough issues as simplistic, black-and-white choices and accuse their opponents of being dead wrong — all at breakneck speed. Successful administrations recognize nuance and complexity, and can afford to take the time for diplomacy and quiet persuasion to triumph.
• Successful campaigns, spending hours in search of the 10-word zinger that will grab media attention away from the opponent, often let language trump substance. Successful administrations, able to get media attention whenever they want it, don’t have to rely on clever sound bites and more readily can let substance drive language.
• Finally, successful campaigns are about fundraising as well as vote getting, and candidates’ schedules are designed with one eye toward extracting as much money as quickly as possible. Successful administrations build the president’s schedule around “Where can I get the votes?” instead of “Who’ll pay the most?”

Okay, so I’ve overstated it. Campaigns do have visions and values, and presidents don’t always act as they should. But you get the point: The system itself is driving us toward these extremes. What’s more, campaigning may hold more overt ethical risk than governing. Voters sadly have come to expect from campaigns a level of moral sponginess — disrespectful language, irresponsible promises, untruthful spins — that they’re more apt to find offensive in presidents.

And that’s the ultimate paradox. At the Olympics, athletes are asked to do precisely what they’ve trained for years to do. In U.S. politics, the winners are asked to do something at right angles to their training — laying aside much of what they’ve learned about campaigning and mastering a whole new set of skills for governing. Little wonder, then, that when a week arrives where candidates need to look presidential, they scramble to figure out how.

©2008 Institute for Global Ethics

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

“It’s a really inadequate situation that we’ve allowed to continue. We have a regulation where, as far as I can tell, there’s no effort to enforce it.”

– Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, speaking last week before hearings into the reported failure of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to “curb the export of discarded electronic products containing hazardous waste, much of which ends up in poorly regulated countries and harms the environment and public health,” according to the Washington Post. The EPA was criticized last week in a report from the Government Accountability Office, which cited widespread agency failure in enforcing new rules requiring the EPA to control such hazardous exports. The EPA says it’s making progress.

Source: Washington Post, Sep. 17.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 22, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 15, 2004 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 3, 2003.

Among the questions: Was impending meltdown caused by greed and recklessness? Does bailout reward bad behavior? Should taxpayers foot the bill for executives’ mistakes?

NEW YORK and WASHINGTON
One of the largest proposed government bailouts in financial history, a move designed to head off what many view as an impending catastrophic collapse of the economy, has raised ethics questions not only about the propriety of the bailout but also about the moral climate that led to the meltdown.

Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Linda Loyd examined the origins of the near-collapse over the weekend, noting that while “proper risk management gets drummed into students,” various business-ethics and finance professors maintain that when times are good, ethics and risk frequently are forsaken for easy money and greed.

Loyd quotes Thomas Donaldson, an ethics and legal-studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, as predicting that ethics discussions now are likely to focus on relationships between government and business, particularly the financial services industry. In the current crisis, buyers were given loans “when they had no money to put down and no reliable credit,” Donaldson said. “Rating agencies were greedy as they marked assets as more secure than they should have been,” he added.

In much the same way, Wall Street securitized home loans and let collateralized debt obligations pile up recklessly, according to Donaldson. “People on Wall Street knew better and tried to make money in a way that was too risky.”

Another group of investors also have been cited as villains in the story, according to Los Angles Times business columnist Tom Petruno.

“After the collapse of Enron Corp. in 2001, Wall Street ’short sellers’ were hailed as heroes for helping to expose the company’s massive accounting fraud,” Petruno writes.

“Seven years later, the ’shorts’ — traders who borrow stock and sell it, expecting to profit from falling prices — are the reviled black hats of global markets. They have been damned by regulators and politicians who say they’re largely responsible for the meltdown in bank and brokerage stocks that brought the financial system to its knees this week.”

Regulators in the United States, Britain, Australia, and several other nations banned short selling last week, provoking protest from those who claim that short sellers merely are an easy target for lawmakers desperate to be perceived as taking action, the Times of London reports.

The short-selling ban was part of the United States’s sweeping proposal to put up about $700 billion in taxpayer money to buy up toppling mortgage-related assets — a plan that the San Francisco Chronicle estimates would represent more than $2,000 in tax obligations for every man, woman, and child in the country.

While the bailout has received widespread — if tentative — bipartisan endorsement, it also has been the focus of anger from both the right and the left, with detractors arguing that it rewards reckless investment, imposes an unfair burden on the middle class, and shifts the burden from Wall Street executives to Main Street taxpayers.

Some lawmakers, including House Financial Services chair Barney Frank (D-Mass.) say they expects Wall Street executives to give up a share of pay and perks in exchange for the intervention, according to a report from Bloomberg.

“If you want to participate in this, if you want your company to be the beneficiary of us buying up this paper, you have got to accept compensation guidelines that will remove this one-way street and provide an incentive structure that does not need too much risk taking,” Frank said.

Sources: Washington Post, Sep. 22 — Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep. 21 — San Francisco Chronicle, Sep. 21 — Los Angeles Times, Sep. 20 — Bloomberg, Sep. 20 — Times of London, Sep. 19 — MarketWatch, Sep. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Sep. 15 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, July 14 — Related Newsline story, July 7 — Related Newsline story, June 16.

Made-in-China label tarnished again as press reports say milk was adulterated on purpose — watered down, with a toxic additive used to make it appear more normal

BEIJING
The most recent product-adulteration scandal to hit China widened considerably last week, with tests now showing that liquid milk also was contaminated by melamine, a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizers.

While the contamination originally was thought to be confined to powdered infant milk formula, Chinese officials have confirmed that the toxic chemical melamine was found in 10 percent of the liquid milk samples taken from three of the nation’s biggest dairy suppliers.

Roughly 54,000 infants have become ill with kidney ailments due to the contamination. Four children have died, another 100 remain critically ill, and nearly 13,000 people remain in hospital after consuming contaminated milk products, reports the Guardian.

As news of the wider contamination spread, China’s chief food-safety regulator, Li Changjiang, resigned, walking away from his post without giving an official reason as of Monday, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Chinese officials have ordered all dairy facilities to be inspected and promised free medical care to all babies sickened by the adulterated milk, reports official state media agency Xinhua.

The Agence France-Presse reports that some Chinese investigators and journalists suspect that the chemical may have been introduced into milk products to cut costs. One of the effects of melamine is to boost the apparent protein content and make watered-down milk appear normal.

Various Chinese press reports contend that the practice has been going on for years, and that China’s corrupt and chaotic food safety system was unable or unwilling to stop it.

Sources: Guardian, Sep. 22 — Wall Street Journal Sep. 22 — CNN, Sep. 22 — CNN, Sep. 21 — Voice of America, Sep. 19 — AFP, Sep. 19 — Xinhua, Sep. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 25 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 11 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 4 — Related Newsline story, July 14.

Alaska probe suddenly vaults into prominence; New York congressman says political opponents and the media are behind his ethics problems; civic groups want ethics reform in Albany

VARIOUS DATELINES
A handful of stories took center stage at the intersection of politics and ethics last week. Among them:

• A state ethics probe that has become the focus of international attention effectively ground to a halt last week, as Todd Palin, husband of Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, refused to testify at a hearing into allegations that his wife abused her power by pressuring state police to fire a trooper. Todd Palin and six others ignored subpoenas from Alaskan investigators looking into whether Sarah Palin fired Public Safety head Walt Monegan for refusing to fire her sister’s ex-husband. Some said they wanted additional information about the proceedings before agreeing to testify, while others contend the probe is biased, reports TIME. Lawyers for presidential contender John McCain and Sarah Palin sued to block the investigation, claiming that it was politically motivated and that any findings should be released after the November election. The investigator heading the probe last week said that his report will be delivered on October 10 despite witnesses’ refusal to testify.
• The House Ethics Committee is expected to vote this week on whether to begin a formal investigation of Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY), who is accused of failing to pay taxes on revenue from a vacation home, misusing a congressional office to raise funds, and improperly keeping control of several rent-controlled apartments, according to a report from CBS News. In an “Open Letter to New Yorkers,” Rangel blamed his troubles on the media and political opponents, saying he has become “a Republican talking point.” Rangel himself requested the ethics probe, saying he wanted to clear the matter up and would accept the committee’s recommendations if he had “inadvertently violated House rules.”
• Several government-reform groups in New York State are urging Gov. David Paterson to reform the state’s ethics laws in order to prevent recurrences of the scandals that rocked Albany. Newsday and Albany-based cable news station Capital News 9 report that the groups want lawmakers to create an independent ethics oversight agency and toughen financial disclosure laws. In addition to the Spitzer scandal, Albany has been rocked by a series of incidents involving lawmakers accused of political, lobbying, and financial misdeeds.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Sep. 21 — TIME, Sep. 19 — CBS News, Sep. 19 — Newsday, Sep. 19 — Capital News 9, Sep. 19 — New York Times, Sep. 16.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Sep. 15 — Related Newsline Commentary, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 8 — Related Newsline story, July 28 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 31 — Palin and Troopergate primer, from TIME, Sep. 11.

Prosecutors say defendant actually worked for the mob; thickening the plot is a deal offered to a hit man to testify against the agent — 12 years for 20 murders

MIAMI
One of the biggest scandals in recent law enforcement history unfolded last week in Miami as a former FBI agent went on trial for murder and conspiracy.

Former FBI agent John Connolly is accused of leaking information that resulted in the procurement of a hit man to murder an accountant, reports the Miami Herald.

Among the moral twists to the story is the allegation that Connolly, who developed the notorious Boston mobster Whitey Bulger as a secret informer, eventually turned into one of Bulger’s henchmen, reports Boston radio station WBUR.

John Martorano, a reputed hit man, last week testified that Connolly ordered him to kill the accountant because mobsters feared he might cooperate with law enforcement, according to reports from the Hartford Courant.

In addition to the purported involvement of an FBI agent in mob activities, press attention has focused on the fact that the admitted hit man has been allowed to go free after serving just 12 years for 20 murders.

The Boston Globe reports that the former head of the Massachusetts State Police said that investigators had “sleepless nights” after offering Martorano a deal in exchange for his testimony.

Foley said the deal was necessary because without it investigators would not have been able to solve the homicides or root out corruption in law enforcement.

Connolly, who retired from the FBI in 1990, is serving a 10-year stretch in federal prison for a 2002 racketeering conviction based on charges that he warned Bulger about an impending indictment.

The jury has not been informed that Connolly is a convicted felon, reports the Globe.

Sources: Boston Globe, Sep. 19 — Hartford Courant, Sep. 19 — WBUR, Sep. 19 — Miami Herald, Sep. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 4 — Related Newsline story, Feb. 4 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, May 14, 2007.

Demonstrators rally against psychologists’ participation in interrogations; think tank warns that brain-boosting drugs may have to be subsidized by schools in order to ease education gap between rich and poor; high-profile disclosure of results of a DNA test spur debate

VARIOUS DATELINES
Moral obligations related to health care providers were featured in several news reports last week. Among the stories:

• About 200 demonstrators rallied outside the convention of the American Psychological Association in Boston last week, protesting the role of psychologists in military interrogations. Demonstrators blasted psychologists who participated in interrogations, claiming that assisting in interrogations is an ethics violation, reports USA Today. Some counter that questioning without the presence of a mental health professional could be more harmful for detainees.
• Drugs known as cognition enhancers already are causing ethics concerns even though they are not widely used yet, reports London’s Daily Telegraph. The U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences has advised the government that the use of such drugs likely is to become so widespread that they will need to be regulated. In addition, a separate government-commissioned report from an ethics think tank warns that schools must be prepared to subsidize poorer children’s use of such drugs so that they can keep up with their more affluent peers, according to the Telegraph report.
• Google co-founder Sergey Brin revealed last week that he is genetically predisposed to Parkinson’s disease, saying he made the discovery though a consumer-oriented genetic testing firm that his wife co-founded, according to trade journal InformationWeek. While Brin said that he made the announcement to garner public input on genetic screening and Parkinson’s treatment, some questioned whether it was more of a publicity stunt to pump his wife’s company. The firm, called 23andMe, recently lowered the price of its genetic screening to $399. Home-based genetic testing, in which samples are mailed to labs, has vaulted to popularity in recent years thanks to leapfrogging technological advances, reports Parade Magazine, but ethical and practical problems remain to be resolved. Among them: choices related to marrying and to having — or not having — children.

Sources: Parade, Sep. 21– New York Times, Sep. 19 — InformationWeek, Sep. 19 — USA Today, Sep. 19 — Daily Telegraph, Sep. 19.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Aug. 25 — Related Newsline story, Sep. 17, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 7 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 23, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 15, 2006.

Ethical aspects of multitasking also highlighted by related story: Study shows that driving while texting is more dangerous than driving while drunk

LOS ANGELES and LONDON
The ethics of multitasking were the focus of several news reports last week, including a New York Times report that California train regulators have banned the use of cellular devices by anyone at the controls of a moving train.

According to the Times, the order came after an announcement from the National Transportation Safety Board that the engineer of a train that crashed on September 12 was sending and receiving text messages while at the controls.

Sky News notes that investigators, who examined the engineer’s phone records, have not said exactly when the messages were sent nor whether they believe the messaging contributed to the tragedy.

The commuter train ran a red light and collided with a freight train, killing 25 and injuring 135, the Los Angeles Times reports.

In related news, Reuters reports that a new study by Britain’s Transport Research Laboratory found that sending text messages from a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than getting behind the wheel under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Researchers found that drivers’ reaction rates plummeted and safe-driving behaviors diminished by larger margins when texting than when impaired by chemicals.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Sep. 20 — New York Times, Sep. 19 — Reuters, Sep. 18 — Sky News, Sep. 18.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, June 9 — Related Newsline story, May 27 — Related Newsline Commentary, Mar. 10 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline Commentary, Nov. 5, 2007.

“Only 26 percent are satisfied with way nation is being governed,” Gallup finds

From Gallup:

“Gallup’s annual Governance poll finds a continued deterioration in public confidence in U.S. government institutions. Just 26% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way the nation is being governed, the lowest in the eight-year history of the Governance poll and tying a 1973 Gallup reading as the lowest ever.

“The percentage of Americans satisfied with the way the nation is being governed has declined each year since 2002, when a high of 59% were satisfied.

“The low levels of satisfaction with the government measured in this year’s poll, conducted Sept. 8-11, seem to derive from highly negative evaluations of the jobs President Bush (31% approve) and Congress (18% approve) are doing….

“Another indication of Americans’ disappointment with Bush and Congress is the historically low levels of trust the public has in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

“The poll finds trust in the executive branch, headed by the president, near the record low from the Watergate era. Just 42% of Americans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the executive branch, similar to last year’s 43%, but the lowest since a 40% reading in April 1974. Trust in the executive branch has been below 50% each of the last three years. That coincides with the roughly two-year trend in sub-40% job approval ratings for Bush.

“Trust in the legislative branch is only slightly better than trust in the executive branch, with 47% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in Congress. But this marks a new low for Congress, as trust in the legislative branch has dropped below 50% for the first time in 15 measurements Gallup has taken since 1972.

“At 69%, Americans’ level of trust in the judicial branch of the federal government remains strong, and is virtually unchanged from where it has been each of the last four years….

“At the same time, a majority of 56% trusts the government’s ability to handle international problems. This is a rare area where public attitudes about government have actually improved….

“While no demographic or political subgroup of Americans shows a high level of satisfaction with the way the nation is being governed, Republicans (48%) are much more likely to do so than are independents (23%) or Democrats (9%)…. ”

For the full press release from Gallup, Sep. 18, click here.

“The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.”

– George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwright, 1856 – 1950)