An ethical 'girlie man'

Carlton Vogt's

Enterprise Ethics

Volume 3 Number 19 July 15, 2005

An ethical 'girlie-man'

Knuckling under after getting caught doesn't make you a moral giant

"I'll be good. Honest. I'll be good." That's what I used to whine after my parents informed me I was being punished. I was about seven years old. And, I quickly learned my late-to-the-party good behavior (or at least the promise of good behavior) didn't count for much. Some people, it seems, never learned that lesson.

We've just gone through a situation in California, in which we learned that our governor -- who ran on a platform of opposing special interests -- signed a contract just days before his inauguration that would pay him up to $8 million for promoting the special interests of a body-building publishing empire. The contract only recently came to light.

Now, the publishing empire gets most of its income from nutritional supplements, and, apparently earning his pay, the governor vetoed legislation -- opposed by the advertisers -- that would have regulated the supplement industry.

Initially, the governor's spokespeople claimed there was nothing wrong with what he had done -- yada yada yada -- but after intense public and political pressure, the governor terminated his future financial relationship with the magazine.

All well and good. Well, all well and good, if you ignore the fact that he had no qualms about the arrangement until it became public; that he saw nothing unseemly about his quid-pro-quo in providing a veto that benefited his second-job employers; that the veto was to the disadvantage of consumers; that his "people" tried to paint the arrangement as wholesome; that, while he won't take future money, he hasn't returned the money already received; and that his veto of the legislation favoring his special interest still stands. So, when you tote it all up, he made a couple of million dollars, and the supplements industry got a pretty good return on its investment, because it can still peddle its wares without supervision. The voters lost.

This is about par for the course for politicians caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I'm not disillusioned, as someone once said, because I was never "illusioned" in the first place. What I did find disturbing, however, was the reaction of my two local newspapers. Instead of taking the public's side in the issue, both spent their time spreading soothing balm over the governor.

Granted that both papers are extremely partisan, both supported the governor, and both have developed an alarming knee-jerk reaction over the last five years of making lemonade out of ethical lemons, but their defense of the governor was beyond fawning. One made him out to be some sort of ethical giant for his decision to knuckle under the political and public pressure. The other declared that he proved his ethics weren't "flabby" by his decision to take the money and run. The "flabby" remark was a clear case of the editorial writer putting a cute play on words ahead of critical thinking.

I'm not bringing this up to pick on our governor -- well, okay, just a little -- but rather to address a phenomenon that's become very prevalent in our public institutions. People engage in unethical behavior. They have no qualms of conscience about it -- if, indeed, they have a conscience at all. Once caught, they deny wrongdoing, then try to justify, and then -- when all else fails -- they repent, are forgiven, and are treated as instant heroes. And the people fall for it.

I'm not opposed to the idea that people can repent, and I understand that the whole idea of sin and repentance is a deeply held religious belief for some people. What I object to is treating people as heroes after they've been dragged kicking and screaming to the place of repentance, especially in terms of their public role.

When I was seven, my parents were very appreciative of my promising to behave better in the future, but they never once put me on their shoulders and paraded me around the neighborhood as some ethical model. I still got sent to my room, and they still kept a wary eye on me, lest my ethical resolve dissolve in the face of future temptation.

It's always gratifying to see someone, once caught, try to rectify his or her behavior. However, that doesn't make someone an ethical role model. That person is, paraphrasing our governor in his own offensive way, an "ethical girlie man."

I'd suggest we take the same path with public officials that my parents took with me. Appreciate the repentance and the belated fine-tuning of conscience, proceed as planned with the punishment, keep a wary eye out for future infractions, and grant trust only when it has been earned -- not merely promised. Sometimes you learn important ethical lessons when you're only seven.